Homecoming= Advent, Arrival, Appearance, Influx, Landing, Meeting, Return, Approach, Disembarkation, Entrance, Happening, Alighting, Dismounting, Acknowledgement, Answer, Revisitation, Recovery, Reoccurrence, Restitution, Repossession, Reinstatement, Reuniting, Recoil, Retreat, Rebound, Reconciliation.
The taxi driver rushed through the outskirts of Buenos Aires in silence. White and grey buildings, decaying paint, brick and tile terraces with grills and dried flower pots. Metallic antennas, telecommunication cables, windows in divided walls, rails in a five lane highway, and another Renault car packed with suitcases heading towards the airport, in the opposite direction. A sudden exit, cobble streets in my old San Telmo neighborhood, youth hang-outs and sexual escapades with my boyfriend, Mi Luna Hotel. A Coca Cola advertisement, Deli Markets with empanadas (meat turnovers) and milanesas (breaded beef cutlets), a graffiti of Carlos Gardel singing tango and Julia Roberts’ image featuring the latest Lancome perfume. A billboard of Shakira’s promising elixir, “Dance,” and United Colors of Benetton’s reconciling cologne, “United Dreams,” depicting Black, Asian, White and Native women next to the words, “I’m White, I’m Black, I’m Yellow, I’m Red.”
Trees decorated the world’s widest avenue, La 9 de Julio, where the obelisk, a gift from the French, stood in its center. Eva Peron’s metallic contour of her head overlooked the traffic. On corporate ad billboards, colorful graffiti from youth gangs cheered up passersby. Still lit, Corrientes Avenue to my right held various signs featuring names of theatre companies, local plays, and cinema productions. Many halls though closed down, their old Neon signs replaced by Cable Television and Netflix advertisements. MacDonald’s occupied the place of the local hamburger joint, PumperNic. Cellular phone stores, Personal and Movistar popped up everywhere. Clothing store’s names showed a mixed of languages and cultures, Legacy, Icebow, Sea Tu Voluntad, Crocs, The London Shop, Rip Curl, Devre, Vilaro Ropa, Ash, Urban Cow, Rouge, Clara, Cheeky, Mc Taylor, Mamy Blue, Yagmour, Boating, OGGI, Look Famacity, Cardon—Cosa Nuestra, Antonio Belgornio, Kill Jeans, Maldito Glam. They stood next to Universo Garden Angels Oils, Freddo Ice Cream Parlor, Karpatos Luggage, Los Robles Polo, Biblos Resto and Coffee Shop, Martinez Café, Starbucks, and The Coffee House. On the edge of transnational shopping, homeless people slept on the Avenue’s parks next to stop buses for shelter. The former city governor closed down the business area to private cars. Only pedestrians, buses and taxis could transit. Children dove into overflowed blue garbage containers looking for the day’s meal. Jugglers did their best at the stop light for some change. Old movies of Soledad Sylveria, Moria Casan, Susana Jimenez, and el Gordo Porcel starred in an old city theatre.
I stared out the window. Another Friday in the Cartesian calendar. At eight in the morning the city woke up from a nightmare. Youth and night owls were gone like my Dad. The avenue’s clock reminded me of the father of rationality, Descartes’ less famous phrase: “To arrive at the truth, one must get rid of everything we know once in a lifetime and rebuild our system of knowledge.” We were always creatures of habits. Tightness in my stomach. After a fall from a horse, my mom’s leg broke. After fifty-six years of marriage, her heart was also broken. Tingling signs from my overworked, burnt out spine. Love and Trauma. Family dynamics, forerunners of negative emotions. Resentments: Unmet expectations. Blame, Anger, Grief. Unconditional love: Words or whims of fate?
The car took a turn on Marcelo T. de Alvear Street, leading to the same bedroom on 1065 Libertad Street. It hit me then I lived on a city street called Freedom since I was a teenager. It never worked. I anticipated jasmine scent from my mom’s perfume, the smell of steak and salad, baked chicken with potatoes, meat bread with homemade ricotta ravioli, ham and cheese empanadas. Her aloe plants hung from the balcony security bars. Intimacy spaces defined the outside in a postmodern world. A fifty-year old refrigerator with magnets from around the world. The same velvet sofa from their wedding gift list. Two hundred-year-old handmade Oriental rugs. The same red kitchen clock I gave my parents for their twentieth-fifth anniversary. No image of an in-between space lacking edges or borders. How many doors did I open to take a look outside? How many doors did I close to take a look inside? Crumbling structures that no longer served me. World contact led me to renovation, invention, and new habits. Maybe Descartes was right but no one listened and lived instead by “to think is to be.” Jorge Luis Borges’ memory of a memory. Was it as real or the same?
The taxi stopped and the driver rushed to put my luggage on the sidewalk. I tipped him a $5 dollar bill. He smiled and didn’t say a word. Pedestrians walked around them. A line of youth in school uniforms stood at the 39 bus stop on Libertad Street and Santa Fe Avenue. My finger held the buzzer. Two crystal doors, two floors, two balconies, two parallel soap-operas between my mother and myself. The lavender oils in my purse soothed my hyperactive, anxious brain. I lowered my sunglasses holding my hair straight. I shook my head and adjusted my eyes to the morning sunlight. I covered my right ear. The sound of the breaks in the orange school bus penetrated my eardrum. Kids yelling in their blue and white uniforms from public schools. It used to be one of the best, free educational systems in Latin America.
The doorman held the doors as I pushed my luggage. I welcomed his greetings and update on my mother.He had a concerned look. “She was always coming and going. She must be in a lot of pain.” I nodded. “Yes, she is pretty active.” I held my mouth tight, thinking what was ahead of me. “We’ll see how she takes it.” I took my sunglasses off and rolled my eyes. “Two months of bed rest.” He chuckled, “Good luck with that.” I closed the metallic door of a tight elevator in the back and pushed the second floor button. The front entrance was always locked.
Going up, I already missed my corner of the world: grounded, neutral territory, walking on my own two feet, unlocked doors, the quiet of the country-side, orange and mint bubble baths, C.I.A agent Carrie Mathison’s bipolar fantasies with a U.S. Marine turned terrorist on Homeland–a popular T.V. show on Netflix, two million unaccounted presidential votes, Sheryl Crow’s song “Soak up the Sun” playing on Spotify between car commercials, the barking of dogs, the grace walk of wild cats and a neighborhood fox, the smell of horse sweat, the crunch of their teeth, the bright orange of calendulas and poppies, the fresh scent of earth, the salty ocean breeze, lavender and pink sunsets, the smell of rotten apples on the ground, the pinch of black berry thorns, poignant horse and cow manure after the morning fog, a $12 New York sirloin steak from Safeway Supermarket, the rattle of raccoons at night, the stormy, cranky wind of California winters, women’s sacred circle, the fog when it touched the warm sand from a Mediterranean-like sun, soothing tea herbs from my garden, fresh lettuce and walnut salad, steamed kale and Swiss chard, the touch of my sweet lover, sunflowers in the rain, freedom beyond a street name, my embodied heart awaken in a hybrid world– my one and only true home.
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[Disclaimer: The stories and pictures in this Blog do not coincide with the women and people depicted in the photographs. Names have been changed to protect their identity. I am solely responsible for the facts gathered and on which the stories and images are based. Nonfiction narrative asserts descriptions understood to be factual and may incorporate fictional elements to clarify and enhance them.]
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