This prose is a tribute to a man (& all those like him) I'll call Fidel, who
survived
the horriffic results of the upheavels of Guatemalan goverment. Fidel is a real
person.
For me, the greatest tribute this poem could have is that he cried when he read
it
and told his ex-wife he never knew his life was ever important enough for
someone to write about.
I am priviledged to call Fidel a friend.
Fidel's Asylum
by Candy Porett
Guatemala.
The word feels soft, smooth and easy,
like sweet coffee and
thick, cream swirling in my mouth.
Guatemala,
in a children's atlas, with pictures
of thick green, monkeys and brilliant birds
squawking from trees,
and maps of roads
and trails leading north
through Mexico to America
created such elation that day
when
he leafed and remembered and
tried to explain
that for which he knew no English
words.
His stainless steel backed teeth glistened
like polished silver crescents,
stainless steel,
like my 3rd cousin Meir's teeth,
the teeth my mother said the Russians
gave him in the work camp,
when they
pulled his for the ivory,
But at least the work camp was not Dakow
or Auschwitz.
Fidel's wife Carol, my Pima friend,
told me her husband couldn't tell
her his real name,
or wouldn't.
She told me his stories
because he couldn't speak
English,
or wouldn't.
But then I can't speak Polish, Lakaota or Yiddish.
Carol told me,
in my English,
not her Pima or Spanish,
about Fidel and why he drank and
went to our
jails and
cried behind his glazed topaz eyes.
Carol said when he was 12
they put him in the army
in twisting heaving
Guatemala
with a gun, maybe an American gun,
that was almost as tall he was
and they
made him watch people from his village,
as they burrowed into Guatemalan earth.
He
was 12
when he pointed his weapon and
watched his people dig deep ditch graves
standing close to the edge,
so they would fall into their tomb,
when the Sargent yelled "Fire", and
Fidel slaughtered them,
when he was 12.
In Spanish,
not English or his tribal tongue,
he told Carol they made him do this
or they would kill his family -
and when he went home at night he couldn't answer
questions, like
"Have you seen my Carlos and Maria?"
He couldn't speak when he was
twelve.
Fidel couldn't speak,
but he cried, and
ran from the Mayan ruins
where silly children fashioned a game called
Man versus Squirrel* and
tumbled in that sacred space.
He'd smile and giggle when we asked
what kind of game this was,
this Man versus Squirrel,
that these little children played
in a place closer to Phoenix than New York,
Miami or Maine.
But Fidel dropped their long rifle
by an unfinished ditch and
became the squirrel
escaping north into Mexico,
into thick jungle and dusty deserts -
north begging to eat,
stealing and gathering and
going north when he was a child.
They made him an example for running
when he was 12
they murdered his
grandfather
because Fidel ran and
couldn't kill anymore,
or watch exploded bodies
plunge
into those earthen holes,
askew,
the way hacked forests float in rivers,
arms
tangled with legs and
dark blood crusting like bark
around gaping mouths,
when he was
12.
In America,
when he was 17,
in 1980 or 81
Fidel came to horses that ran.
Now,
Carol says,
in winter when Fidel digs holes for developments
and trees and fences,
he
misses the horses
even the crazy thoroughbreds who stand
calm as sleep for Fidel
while he rubs their tight racing tendons
whispering his soft native tongue
with more
secrets of his Guatemala
and maybe his real name.
*Man vs. Squirrel was a chasing game Fidel and his brothers created when they
were young and ran up and down the steps of Myan Ruins.