Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
TRYING TO BE SOMEBODY
Today I will begin some embroidery with my grandmother.
But I don't feel right,
I'm a little worried and scared.
Last night I woke up in a fright from a bizarre dream,
and can still remember it clearly.
I was wearing a long dress,
and holding a doll with blonde hair,
the kind whose eyes roll around like marbles.
There I was wearing a shawl, next to an old man.
I was wearing high heels, like those,
just like the ones they wear on television.
It was me, but it wasn't me.
I wondered, "What am I going to do when I grow up?"
Today, my father and I were having a meal
when he said once I finished elementary school
I should go to junior high school
To become somebody.
I should carry on studying because I am the eldest and
since he did not have any sons,
he wants me to study to be a nurse or a teacher.
Sometimes he says that if he lends my cousin Pedro money to cross over the border
that I should move to the north.
My Dad does not want me to marry someone from here.
He does not want me to be a just a village girl.
He wants me to be somebody.
I'm sorry; I don't know what it means to be somebody.
I will finish elementary school in two weeks.
I am an average student.
But I really enjoy going to school.
Because I learn a lot and I have friends there.
At school I don't have to listen to my Mom bossing me around all day.
I would love to write the books we study at school.
But my Mom says that those are just dreams,
like the ones that keep me awake at night.
She also says that I should act like a woman,
Instead of running around like a crazy kid.
She wants me to marry a rich man,
Like Santos, whose Dad owns the local store.
But he is already grown up, and I don't like grown-up men.
I don't understand my Mum,
because she wants me to learn a lot,
so that they don't make me dumb, and we can leave this place.
Then sometimes she says that this is our home, the center of our world, and that we
will never leave.
Here are our roots.
But the only roots that I can see are under the trees.
Soon I will graduate and have a party,
and they will kill the turkeys that we've been raising since they were chicks.
I myself feed them every day.
We are going to invite my teacher to the meal.
She says that I am good at drawing,
and that I could become an artist,
because she has seen the traditional cloths my grandmother and I embroider.
I have never wanted to be a doctor.
I am scared of blood!
I can't even bear to see it, let alone have injections
like those vaccinations they give us.
My grandmother and I always chat as we embroider.
She says that I must learn to plant crops,
and that it is time to learn to pray a rosary
because the village always needs someone to lead the prayers,
and that I will be the village healer when she dies,
To cure people of their fears, or indigestion, things like that.
She also tells me off when I do not take care of my sisters.
She says that a young women should look after them, as practice for when I have my own children.
But I don't know if I want to be a mother yet.
I get more confused every day.
I want to become somebody in this life, so, "Am I not somebody?"
I'm worried about what could happen to me.
And then these strange dreams...
Last Saturday I saw Juana, my cousin.
She married our neighbor Lucio and they have two children.
I think that she has become a woman.
She did not finish high school, but they call her Mrs. wherever she goes.
They always call me a girl, or a child.
When we were younger we used to play together in the corn fields.
We would play, and jump around.
But my Dad says that I should not be like her.
I should be somebody.
But - is she someone or isn't she?
My Dad wants me to be like Sonia, the baker's daughter.
She is at college in a city.
And she comes back to the village on holiday.
She is training to be a lawyer and she is very pretty.
She wears high heels, perfume and makeup.
All the men here whistle at her when they see her.
Well, I would not want to be whistled at.
It must feel really nasty.
When I remember my other cousin Martha
and her brothers and sisters, I get very worried.
They come here in big cars, listening to strange music.
That is, in a different language.
And they always smoke, close to the church,
in their fancy clothes and flashy jewelry.
I don't want to go there,
to that country they say is very big.
Where the only work is washing dishes or in the fields.
But my Mom says that you can buy all kinds of things there.
I don't want to come back looking like them.
In fact, I don't want to leave at all.
I actually don't know what I want to do.
But there is one thing I'm sure of:
I want to embroider all my life.
That way I can embroider a dream, and much more.
I just want to be what I am right now.
Even if I'm not somebody.
THE END