D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March 2010
GOING TO PALOMAS Third in a series
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The Church and the Carnival
Story and photos by Victoria Tester |
Editor's note: Over a decade ago, Victoria Tester began to visit and photograph the Mexican border town of Palomas, and to keep journals as a candid record of her experiences there. In this series, Tester offers us a retrospective of her journeys there.
At El Puerto they bring me coffee in a cup that looks like broken stained glass and I stir in the thick sugar that won't dissolve unless the water is very hot.
A new baby rests in a car seat under the white bird of the Annunciation on the wall, and the old television is balanced on the refrigerator. On the screen, an old man has an apoplectic fit. He slaps a virtuous young woman in rage. Other men, maybe her brothers, jump in and hold his arms to prevent him from doing her more harm. The camera zooms in on the faces of the actors.
The boy who brought my tacos and the woman who works in the kitchen come running in fast. They turn up the volume, loud.
"Did she faint, did she faint?" the woman cries.
"Almost," the other customer and I say, grim. "She almost fainted."
I go into the tiny black closet. I can't reel my own film, but I have to try. My secret is that I can't be in perfect darkness. If there isn't at least a tiny speck of light, I go spinning into blackness. It's like I'm only four cardinal points without a center, flying out into the universe. Pure terror. I shout, if there's someone to hear me, and even if there isn't.
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They call it vertigo.
My photography teacher says maybe it is only an inner-ear imbalance. That maybe even all the poetry that comes out of my pen is from this inner-ear imbalance.
That makes me angry.
I close the tiny closet door and stand in blackness. I want to faint. I start to spin. I'm going to fall. I try to catch a whiteness in my mind, something I can hold to.
I shout. I'm furious, unbalanced in this ridiculous black closet Inquisitioners invented for my sake. "I can't do this!"
My teacher appears like a glowing fierce gnome, or a little St. Francis. "You can!" he shouts back.
And I do. By God, somehow, I do, and the film is on the reel.
I want to photograph a birth. I ask the cook at El Puerto if women still give birth at home, or with midwives, in Palomas.
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"Women can't get a birth certificate for their child anymore unless they're delivered by a doctor," she explains. "If their children aren't delivered by doctors, then they don't have the papers they need to go to school."
She shakes her head sadly. "They've put the parteras, the midwives, out of business."
Five children stand next to the red and white and green grotto that houses a little statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Out of the blue the oldest, a girl of maybe 12, asks the others, "Where do you want to go to school, Columbus or Palomas?" "Palomas!" the bright-eyed younger girl answers, fast. "Me too," the older one says, firmly. "And you?" she asks the older boy, big-shouldered with a mischievous face. "Palomas!" he shouts.
And then he turns to the slender, younger boy, the fourth of the children and the only one who hasn't said anything, shaking him hard. "But this one, he doesn't go to school anywhere! Can you say 'nowhere'? Say it, say 'nowhere!'"
The boy, maybe nine years old, looks down at the dust, intelligent, shy and miserable. Later someone tells me he lives with a loving grandmother who can't afford the books to send him to school.
But he won't say it. He won't say, "nowhere," and I'm glad.
They all turn to the smallest boy, three years old, still treasuring the remains of a broken clown piata he found in the street.
"And you, where do you want to go to school?" they ask him.
"Nowhere!" he cries passionately.
She may be going to a dance. She may be in love. She doesn't trust me, the gringa with the camera, or very much else around her in Palomas. She thinks older woman just aren't as smart as she is because we're not as beautiful.
But it's clear her mother loves her.
Her mother is worried. "Tell her about men," she begs me. "You know," she says. "It happened to you, too."
"Men are big sorrow, girl," I warn her. "Forget men. They're Vikings. Sure, handsome Vikings. When you see their dragon ships, run for your life or you'll be sold into slavery. Or else become a low-ranking third wife to a minor chieftain."
She laughs.
She chops the red tomato, the white onion and the green avocado she's been craving, she confides, this whole past week, and offers, as if in friendship: "Look, Victoria, the Mexican flag."
V — is king of his bed, and justly, pretty much the whole house, by popular vote. He sits at the table and copies an old sentence he inherits from an older child over and over in a worn tablet. I write his name for him in it. He copies that too, carefully. He is excited because we're all going to stay up late and watch soap operas and maybe a movie after the late news.
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The whole family and I gather around the magical box until late in the night, entranced by the old stories of good versus evil.
Sometimes the picture on the magic box is ruined by static, and V — jumps up. It's his job to kick the side of the television to make it work again. He kicks it, we sigh in relief, he's our hero, and he runs back to join us.
After we watch the very last show, the men go sleep on their side of the house, and we women and the children sleep in ours, three to a bed, waking up at night to take turns peeing in a white bucket.
Early morning, the older children gather around V — , to watch him eat the only egg in the house.
Their faces a little pale, they go to school without breakfast.
Sundays, the cantina women come in together at the very last moment before the mass. They stand huddled at the back of the church, their heads covered modestly with mantillas and scarves. They look hesitant, afraid and ashamed. They have broken the spine of the world and they know it. Just before mass ends they tiptoe from the church — yes, I still swear their faces almost a little happier — before anyone else does.
Am I the only one who turns to watch them go?
"Father Elias," I ask, "was there an exact moment when you knew you wanted to become a priest?"
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"It was during a mass, an afternoon in July at the Church of the Divine Savior. In my village in Puebla, when I was 15. I heard it, very quietly, the voice of God calling me."
"You mean it isn't one moment your branches are green and the next you're blasted by lightning?"
"No, it was quiet. An inquietude. It was the voice of God calling to His child, and His child responding. I kept it secret for eight years."
"How can the voice of God be a quiet one?"
"It's something that can't be explained."
"It was your secret?"
Elias laughs. "I only told my friend Luis, and he told me he, too, wanted to become a priest. We ran away to the seminary together to talk to the fathers there."
"They took you in?"
"No, when they found out we'd come in secret, without telling our families, they chased us off."
Wander the streets without going into houses, churches or cafes. Just be a stranger. You're so tired of this sorrow named Palomas.
Hide from the Church. Will they find you here at the carnival? What is the opposite of a Church? Is it this carnival?
"Palomitas," little doves. Say "palomitas," the word for popcorn in Spanish. Say "a thousand little doves in one striped bag" in any language real fast three times.
Won't you buy popcorn from the solemn little boy who stands beside the popcorn machine?
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Why worry where will you sleep tonight in Palomas?
Crawl inside your camera. Go to sleep.
Eight o'clock, dark, I go to pick up C — and he directs me to his mother's house. I'm always lost in Palomas. We cross what C — jokingly calls "our Golden Gate Bridge" and there's the dirt yard and the unplastered adobe.
L — is at the door in the same bright colors, looking as harsh and as untrustworthy as ever. I haven't said hello and I want to say goodbye.
L — introduces me to her new husband. The carnival's in town. Her new husband is a carnival man, 20 years younger than she is. From the neck down, I can see why she married him.
She's excited. She shows me the marriage certificate.
But he looks seedy, and I worry.
She doesn't believe I'm not making money from my photographs of Palomas. It's in her eyes: I must be lying, or an idiot.
Surely they've hatched a plot to kill me for the American driver's license I hide in my shoe. Really all I have of value besides my Olympus.
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They don't kill me.
I almost wish they would because by 10 o'clock I have such a headache from L — 's loud mouth that I cross back into Columbus to sleep in Pancho Villa State Park. But when I get there I decide I don't want to spend the $6, which buys two meals in Palomas.
So I drive to the Holy Family Church instead and park in the empty parking lot.
Once I attended the evening mass here. The only people in the church were the old priest and an old woman wearing a silver headscarf. When I came in, a few minutes late, the priest, brightening, turned on an extra row of lights for me.
I see the old priest's little yellow Rabbit parked outside the rectory, and imagine him inside, comfortable and unhappy.
I imagine myself — knocking at his door, inviting myself to dinner and then yes, a brandy, too, please — and his anger at being disturbed.
So I roll the seat of my old Volvo back until it presses against the backseat, and settle down for the night.
I wake up again and again, dreaming day has dawned. But there's only darkness and the streetlights that substitute for stars.
I try to stay warm. I pull my socks higher and the hems of my pants lower. I take off my jacket and wear it like a blanket and pull my arms inside my black polyester shirt.
Every few hours I turn on the car, let the heater run a few minutes until I'm warm, then turn it off. Go back to sleep.
I hear a noise near the car. Could it be the drug runners that haunt the border?
I don't look out the window. I'll fight when I have to, but for now I'd rather not know if there are evil men out there.
I wait for their violence to explode like a black and gold dawn, but it doesn't.
In the morning, when there's no mistaking the blue sky, I open the Volvo door. A little white and gold Chihuahua comes tenderly out from under the car, wagging his tail. Goes sidling away from my laughter to back across the street where he came from.
Thank You, God, for the safety of the Holy Family Parking Lot.
Now I can afford another day in Palomas.
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One way to help the people of Palomas is to donate to Esperanza Lozoya, La Luz de la Esperanza (Light of Hope) Outreach, an interdenominational organization that provides health care and sustenance to those in need. Send donations to: Esperanza Lozoya, PO Box 38, Columbus, NM 88029, or call 543-5604, or contact Victoria Tester for dry good donations, 536-9726.
Victoria Tester is an award-winning poet and playwright, the author
of Miracles of Sainted Earth (University of New Mexico Press).