The desert brings rumors of rain. Drums in the distance announce a sudden euphoric dance of lights that runs through the humble pile of my belongings. Less and less with each move. I must not grow roots, I have to be ready, always ready to return.
Boxes, shoes, cups, forks. Lost toothbrush, broken angel. Strings, flutes. Out of a box I take books to fill in the bookcase. Rain knocks insistently at my window. I pick up an album of old photographs. I hesitate, close my eyes and open them to grandmother, birthday parties; I, delicate and shy at the piano, one skinny leg trying to reach the pedals.
Two long tears burn my skin through shirt, sweat and dirt, a plastic fork falls on my foot. Somewhere outside a shot of lightning has struck the desert floor.
Implacable, the pages open. In the darkness behind my pupils, I return.
A young group is coming out of the music, dance, theater tower, Universidad de Chile. We are beautiful and hungry. A crooked picture of us singing at Ahumada Avenida, the voices of a Bach Invention pa pa pa la la la la, coins fall in a silly hat. A street, people, a bus stop.
A transparent figure, I fly, my dance shoes hanging from my shoulder. Thousands upon thousands, we are going to stand under the balconies of La Moneda. It’s June 29, 1973, after a seemingly failed coup against the Popular Government. People arrive on buses, trains, Chile sings, dances, we are strong, we are ready to defend our President Allende, our new history. The rain, unnoticed, spreads a cold, long shiver over our passion.
Way North they see us and they tremble.
On a front page of El Mercurio, a warning, communists take over the streets. We march, somewhere I am red flag red shirt, we are so certain, determined, joyful, so very proud.
The radio in the bus changes suddenly from a cumbia to a military march. Eyes turn to each other. Silence. Nobody gets off at the stops. The smell of fear binds us together until the bus driver announces that he is going home to his family. It’s September 11, 1973. I run to the university. The eleven-floor tower seems farther than ever. I fly by La Moneda, the presidential house surrounded by tanks. This does not happen in Chile, no sucede en Chile, my steps match my heart, no no, no en Chile.
They must not have noticed my thin, ghostly run.
The doors are closed, I put my hand on the big handle, and retrieve it immediately. It’s stained with blood. I scream and someone pulls me inside. I run to the elevator. Not the elevator! The blasting of machine guns and bombs resounds in the hallways amidst echoes of instruments and dancing feet running to the basement. The building shakes, they have destroyed the radio on the 11th floor. In the streets we hear people screaming, shots, silence, commands, shots, screaming. Silence.
A group of soldiers comes in, surrounds us with machine guns like in a war film. They order us to the floor and the search starts. For guns, for bombs they say and kick and touch, and feel like proud warriors. They find music books, dance shoes and tights, flutes, violins. Our terrifying weapons. They order us not to leave the building and are gone. Somebody has a small radio. The words of our President Allende comfort us: “…the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society….” The voice is gone.
We hug as a flower ready to shed its petals. As a flower, we hug in a silent goodbye, and our eyes are flooded with blood, torture, exile, fear, the word hope almost lost in the mist of our sorrow.
The night is longer than regular nights; they come back to search us. The new command comes. We are to leave one by one and go to our homes. Some never make it. Our careers, love, plans, our young revolution, turned to ashes. Stadiums converted into prisons and torture chambers, people being thrown into the ocean, or exiled to faraway lands with impossible languages, strange customs, longing to go back. Always longing.
Challenging death, after a few years, women take the streets, march, protest, organize. The struggle had started again. It took seventeen years of patient work to overthrow the dictatorship.
Tonight, the rain has stopped, and aromas of desert herbs swim into my air. Coyotes shake water from their backs and search the night for survival prey. The tarantula gets ready to mend the spidery entrance to her habitat. The gorgeous eyes of the snake wait.
They never killed us.
--Tucson, Arizona, 4 July, 2011
Photo: University students celebrate the election of Salvador Allende in Santiago, Chile, 1970. (by Paul Lowry/cc by 2.0/Flickr)
