Large Bodies and Spaceships
BY TANIA PÉREZ OSUNA
You stand in the doorway of your abuelitos’ house in Tecuala and all you can think about is that it feels weird to use the front door. No one ever comes in this way. The black wrought iron doors are cracked open; your eyes follow the swirls at eye level that then twist into a heart. You push the door and look into the dark living room. The room is only illuminated by a single string of multi-colored Christmas lights adorning a framed picture of the Virgen of Guadalupe and white light coming off the television. A novela is on. You see two women—one with red hair and the other with deep brown hair—yelling at each other through gritted teeth over someone named Fernando. There is a servant in the background, she looks like you. She has dark brown skin, two braids coming down the sides of her face and a body that is hard to differentiate from her embroidered shirt and skirt. You follow the white light to your Tía Susana who is sitting in a half-moon chair. The frame of the chair is made of iron, and the seat is woven with colorful rope filling the gaps between the metal bars held together by intricate knots. There are yellow strands that turn into red strands as they get closer to the opening circle in the center, the blue strands turn to green. Her body presses against the rope, held up by it. She turns to look at you. Her eyes are gentle and readjust to the light let in from the outside streetlights.
She says with a smile, “Preciosa, de su Tía. ¿Dónde andabas?”
You stand in the black doorway half in half out of the room. Both of your shoulders slowly collapse into your body. Your eyes suddenly fill with tears.
You look down at the floor and see white and turquoise living room tiles. The white part of the tiles looks just like the waves that break in Playa Novillero.
It takes five minutes to close the distance between your Tío’s house and this doorway, but it feels like forever. You step carefully on the cobblestones that fit together like a puzzle and with each step you try to put together what went wrong this time. You look down at your sweaty palms, your skin stretched taught over your knuckles clenching a barbie doll tightly. You look down at her briefly and notice her blonde hair. You follow the hair to her bent elbows, and knees. Her hot pink blow up sofa in your other hand.
Your Tía’s smile fades. Between her eyes are two faint threads that connect her back to your mother and grandmother. Their elevens deepen when they are worried, angry, or concerned. Your Tía and mother look alike in this light—their deep copper skin, the way their hair breaks into curls, and eyes that can shift from care to fight in .02 seconds with a flick of their eyebrows.
“¿Preciosa, qué pasó?”
How do you tell her you went over to your Tío’s house to play with your cousins and instead were told to hand over your Christmas presents?
“You should give your toys to your cousins. They are younger than you. You come from el otro lado, you can get another one when you go home.”
You look down at your Barbie—her colorful retro outfit, her tiny pink sunglasses, the pink blow up chair she came with. You avoid the question or the demand, just laugh it off. You pick up your doll and say you have to go. On your way out, your Tío asks, “Don’t they have dance classes in the US? You should join one, maybe you can lose some weight.” You smile and say yes of course. You gather all your things as you start to fold in on yourself, hoping to disappear. He’s the tío that calls Tía Susana and your mom negra. His family is whiter and won’t let you forget it. The warmth that heats up our brown skin is extinguished in them.
Folding yourself is something you do often. You first start with your fingers, each phalange neatly bent over into their metacarpal counterpart into the carpals, and systematically you go through all the parts of your body until all you are left with is a small triangle piece of paper that can be flung across a room. The last time you felt this way was at your birthday party a few months ago. As you unwrapped presents, your mother insisted on taking pictures of you with each unwrapped gift. You got to a gift bag and as you pull out its contents, the folding begun. It was a jump rope. You knew exactly what would follow. As you started to fold, your Tío yelled across the room, “Es para que hagas ejercicio, a ver si así pierdes peso.” Lucky for him your ears were still extended out, so you heard him. All that was left after the final crease was made, was a sharp line and a smile stamped on the front of a triangle. You whisper “gracias,” the wind comes and takes you away.
This memory and what happened today makes you feel like you have too much. Too many toys, too much body, too much English and simultaneously are not enough.
You explain to Tía Susana that they tried to take your dolls. The glass in your stomach shatters and the shards travel to the inside corner of your eyes.
“Pendejos.”
You’re shocked by her cursing but also amused by it. It sounds so much like a fact when she says it. You let out a small laugh. She smiles too and the light catches the gold outline of her two front teeth ever so briefly.
She extends her arms out toward you. Her arms are adorned with semanarios, a gold bracelet for every day of the week. They dance on her arms, hitting against each other, making music, catching the dim light. One of your tíos always makes a joke that all he needs is a Tuesday and a Thursday from her. Tía Susana rolls her eyes at him. You slowly go towards her, letting her envelop you in her arms. Her soft body encapsulates you as you sit on her lap. She looks at you—a neatly folded triangle, and starts the process of unfolding you piece by piece. She takes your head and unfolds it from your neck, expands out your eyes, widens your mouth, unfolds your humerus from your radius and ulna on each side, unsticks all of your ribs, unfolds your femur from your pelvic ilium and keeps going until she gets to your fingers. The soft skin of her arms feels like the softest velvet.
Everyone is always trying to tell Tía Susana she has to lose weight, and her response is always “callate bigote de cucaracha” or “vete a la verga” and a death stare. She refuses to fold herself for anyone. You think it’s because you once overheard the adults whisper about her body not always belonging to her. Being stolen as a girl, kept away from family, forced to do things for men in Tijuana. Being tricked by a cousin and being trapped somewhere far away from family. Your family once said your grandmother woke up one day from a nightmare where she saw her dead on the street. She took all her money and left her young children alone including my eight year old mother to search for her—only to find her in a hospital room, hurt and pregnant, but alive.
Even when she’s in public, people call her “Susanona” making her name bigger, as a way to offend her. Instead, it feels like every time someone expands her name she grows more and more important. She anchors herself more and more to existence. This space is mine, she seems to say. I built this body and within it a home for myself. So much so that she’s become the local baseball team’s unofficial cheerleader. If the team wants to win, they send a taxi for her to come to the games.
You look up at her. Her eyes are not open. Her curly hair is wet from a shower. She is wearing her favorite outfit, a flowy dress with an animal stamped on it. This one has a butterfly and is blinged out in rhinestones. Her neck holds three necklaces—one with a cross, the other her name, and the third is a flat figaro chain; it is made up of three small links separated by one long link, repeating. She smells like humidity, the sweetness of mango and a distant rose. The white light from the TV catches your eye, the red headed woman is now yelling so hard her face is the same color as her hair, she hopes the sound of her voice chases a man on a horse. The character that is you is in the background washing dishes after breakfast. You have no lines in this story.
The chair you’re in with your Tía suddenly starts to make a whirring sound that fills the air. The metal bars start to expand. The once plastic rope becomes stronger and radiant, giving off a warm neon hue. The knots light up then pulse and flatten and flow down to cover all the gaps between the ropes. You are not scared because your Tía is here, and if there’s anything you know about her it’s that she will keep you safe. Much like she kept your mother safe before you.
Suddenly, you’re in a multi-colored spaceship, looking down not at the white and turquoise living room tiles but the ocean, the waves coming and going. The multicolored cords of the chair have transformed from plastic to chrome. The shape of the spaceship remains the same as the chair just larger, with the exposed parts covered in glass. You continue your ascension. Perhaps you should feel nervous about where you are going, but being held by your Tía makes it hard to feel anything but warmth. Soon the spaceship comes to a halt. You are suspended in space together. In the distant darkness of space, the Virgen de Guadalupe is covered in huge lights shaped like roses. It’s just the three of you here amongst the stars and planets. You look into the vastness of space, then look at your body again, at your Tía whose face is covered in peace.
Tía Susana, adorned in gold, reaches into her breast and pulls out a small pouch. She brings out a thick gold ring with your name written in cursive. She hands you the ring. Wordlessly, you take the ring with your unfolded fingers and inspect it. It is heavy for its size and a shiny yellow gold. It’s always strange to see your name written out, strange to know that you exist.
“Este anillo es para ti mi preciosa. Tania, tienes que recordar que tú solo le perteneces a ti misma.”
You lay your head on her chest, and she gently places her hand on your face. You look at her, and she says, “Para ti, siempre habrá más.”
We both laugh. As our laughs intertwine with each other, waves, frequencies, and amplitudes join each other, and the laugh becomes larger and splits the sky open in harmony. The largeness of us creates a portal to somewhere else.
