“Auntie Karen, hey! Wasn’t sure if you could hear me through the intercom. It’s me—Johnny and Blanca’s son. Can you let me up? I just gotta ask you something real quick!”
A few moments passed before he heard the sound of a screen being raised. His aunt’s beautiful dark face emerged, older, but still familiar. She looked at him pointedly in the eye, but the softness he had always known there was gone.
“Prieto, no reason to let you up. In case the package wasn’t clear: she doesn’t have anything else she wants to say to you, nor does she have anything she wants to hear from you.”
APRIL 2002
April 25, 2002
Querida,
Lately I’ve found myself thinking about the role of women in the world and the important part we play in forcing hands of power to create change. No matter where I’ve traveled, women, when given space, have excelled at organizing and improving their communities. We’re born with barometers in our belly that make us more sensitive to the climate around us and, because we’re so often on the lowest rung of any ladder, we’re naturally inclined to look out for the least among us. Since we’re also burdened by domestic tasks, we’re forced to be more efficient. In a woman’s world, time is the most precious commodity, and we don’t have it to waste.
Of course, the problem is that we don’t live in a world just of women. Not only do men exist, but we are drawn to them and, for complex reasons, they do not treasure time in the same way that we do. It may have to do with an inability to face mortality, or needs of ego, or maybe it simply has to do with the fact that they don’t hear the ticking of a biological clock. What I can say with certainty is that a man has no problem wasting time, especially that of a woman. And they manage to do so in such insidious ways we often don’t notice that it’s happening until it’s too late.
Sometimes it looks like passion—they adore us, they treasure us, they want to be with us in the morning, every night, on the weekends. We, our hearts open, eager to give that love back and warmed by the light of their admiration, comply. We make ourselves available at their convenience, never giving another thought to what we might have done with those moments, hours, and days had they not asked for them. We justify it by saying, but what’s more important than love? Never remembering that when they ask for your time it’s always before and after they’ve accomplished what they wanted to do with their day.
Sometimes it looks like being supportive—they trust us, they need us, they feel we understand them, they believe we make them better. We, overflowing with capacity to care, flattered that we are so special, so chosen, so intellectually equal and necessary, we again comply. We put our energy—our tremendous energy—into strategizing how to achieve their dreams. How to help actualize their visions. Not realizing that the size of their ambitions blocks the light with which to see our own.
Sometimes love looks like being a savior—they seem lost, confused, without direction. We, ever-optimistic believers in change and the power of unconditional love, again comply. We give them guidance, we offer discipline, we go so far as to loan them our vision until they can find one of their own. All while our own dreams gather dust.
Olguita, mi amor, I have heard that this man—this “musician”—wants to settle down. I implore you to walk the other way. Mija, you’re only twenty-five years old! Your own dreams are hardly formed, and I worry that with a man like that—a man who seems so lost himself—you’ll spend your whole life supporting his ideas and his career and his children.
Marriage, when I was young, was a permission slip. The only way, in those days, a young woman could cross the threshold into adulthood. But you and your generation have the chance to be truly liberated—and true liberation is freedom from obligation. Obligation to soothe a husband’s ego, or a baby’s hungry cries.
Your father was brilliant. A dreamer. An idealist. He was a wonderful lover and a wonderful father. I loved him madly. Yet, at the end of the day, I had to accept the choice in front of me: I could spend my time soothing his loneliness and hurt, trying to motivate him back into purpose, or I could spend my time working towards the liberation of oppressed people around the world. Both, you must understand, are expressions of love. The choice isn’t necessarily easy.
I worry that you’re seduced by the money and the life that this guy represents. I worry that you’ve been bewitched by the little bit of limelight you get being next to a man who is the actual star. Have you mistaken the cost of the gifts he likely gives you with the value he has for you? Your Papi used to say that the greatest fool is the man of color who defines his success by the White Man’s standard. I’ll add to that: if he’s a fool, then his trophy wife is to be pitied.