Free Chango's Fire by Ernesto Quinonez Page A

the clinic.
    I pay the woman.
    Maritza and I don’t talk. Maritza is watching the clock. She knows she has to get the girl back in time before the service is over. I can tell the girl’s mother is in on it along with Maritza. The girl’s father must be a nonbeliever and so he is not at church, and they can use the time to sneak out and get the girl revirginized.
    We sit and do nothing but wait. In the waiting room the beautiful woman with fake tits, fake ass, fake nose is talking to a future customer.
    â€œHay una problemita.
You’re getting married next week,” she says in Spanish, “you can’t get married next week. You need at least a month or two for the stitches to dissolve.”
    â€œStitches?” the customer frowns.
    â€œ
S
í sweetie, stitches. If you have sex on your wedding night with the stitches intact,
ay dios mío,
the infection rate is so high that I can’t begin to tell you.”
    â€œBut we are getting married next week. Is there another way?” the customer says.
    â€œNo sweetie, you have to find a way to postpone your wedding, otherwise, if you have sex with stitches, well, you’ll fool your husband but you could die.”
    Maritza had been listening to the conversation as well. She shakes her head in sadness, disgust or disbelief. Her eyes focus on the young woman whose head is hanging and who is about to cry. Maritza wants to get up and do something, but the woman hugs and coos her.
    â€œNo te apures,
” she says. “It’s no big deal. I had mine done, too. I had my whole body done. The only thing real are my teeth,” she says and the young woman forces a smile. “Good,” she tells her, “smile, we women, we have our little secrets.” Then she looks my way, “We trick you men all the time.”

Complaint #7
    Dear Julio,
    When I moved to Spanish Harlem I was so concerned about being politically correct and nonracist that I inadvertently did stupid things that demonstrated my fear and ignorance. I was hyperaware when I was the only white person walking on the street. So many men have said “hey baby” to me and “God bless your eyes” that I started to avoid looking at people’s faces. But that didn’t work, because then I neglected to see one of my neighbors saying “Hello” to me three or four times. That neighbor was your mother. I find that I still can’t say “gracias” instead of “thank you,” because I’m afraid I will mispronounce it and sound stupid—despite the fact that I’m proficient in French, Italian and Portuguese.
    Let me explain that I have a weird blend of haughtiness and guilt. The haughtiness comes from abiding by the manners of the environment I am used to, an environment where it is rude to catcall and where people handling food wear plastic gloves, and no one shouts in the street or anywhere else outside. But my guilt becomes frustration in the fact that I don’t know how to reconcile the fact that I didn’t cause these discrepancies,
other white people who aren’t even related to me did.
Still I am being held responsible in this neighborhood by
some
individuals who react to me like the embodiment of the Evil White Empire. Similarly, I react to some individuals as if they are the typical stereotypes I have encountered on TV.
    Of course, I could take Spanish lessons and it would be so, so easy for me to learn the language. But to hear Spanish without understanding it is like being in front of a great work of abstract art. I feel slightly overwhelmed but I find new things every time I hear it, like I find new things when I look at Pollock. Part of me likes being surrounded by my own personal un-understanding because it feels more real and more interesting than my world where everyone assumes authority, expertise, and therefore control.
    My parents moved to that Wisconsin town I was born in after they met in Ithaca,