A Global Bozo in an American World
Persistent Bloom
A. Veces
Para mi mama y las trabajadoras del mundo
Marisol Arena had spent close to a year in the Valley, but whenever she walked through the Galleria she couldn’t help but feel like an extraterrestrial alien rather than an international one. She remembered being overwhelmed by the shopping malls of San Salvador after living so long in her pueblita querida. After spending time in the Galleria, her memories felt sharper, and she the dirt and smells of the capital came back clear. In the states, the stores seemed to burst at the seams inside a clean, square box. She stared into the shop windows and saw dozens of mannequins leaning on each other to the point where she could not see inside of the stores. In the Galleria, she’d bustle against people and crowds, and the lack of a single dirty footprint on the carpeting surprised her. The white doors, escalators, and elevators all shined spotless, and only green Christmas trees and reefs interrupted the all-encompassing glimmer. When Marisol dwelt on the cleanliness, it surprised her how uneasy it made her feel. The size, crowds, and sterility all reminded her of a hospital.
To her relief, she didn’t have to stay long. She just had to pick out something nice for her little sister Tania back home. She, her cousin, and two other girls from her hometown in the apartment were all preparing to send a large package of gifts back to El Salvador. She imagined a nice dress or sweater inside a box with a note attached: Para la Navidad. She knew her sister wouldn’t be able to wait until then, but hopefully their mother would be able to restrain her.
Marisol gazed into the entrance of a large department store and at the racks of winter coats. She really should get her mother something nice too, but when she asked her mother over the phone if she’d like anything in particular for the holidays, she said, Mija, tu sabes que sólo quiero una cosa. Tienes que estar aquí con su familia. Marisol ended up getting her a new toaster, although she worried even that might be too extravagant for her mother.
Her mother never approved of her going to the states. You can provide for us enough here, she said. The journey is too risky. You’ll be treated like dirt. You’d be abandoning your family. Sometimes Marisol feared the last one rang truer than the others. When her father died she and her mother became the sole breadwinners, and Marisol worked in a garment factory from the age of 18 up until the day she left home at 22. A year later she still feared that she left less for better opportunities and more to run away from that hellhole. Day in and day out at the maquila she heard the whir of sewing machines punctuated by the sharp thud of thread going in and out and in and out. She felt the moisture in the air blanket her own forehead with the sweat of others. She punctured her own hands to the growls of supervisors telling her to hurry to the point that fabric and skin seemed inseparable.
The day after her seventh injury at the maquila, she remembered looking at a carton of flimsy brown blouses she had sewn. As she laid another blouse in the box, she pressed her hand against the fabric and saw her hand disappear like a chameleon. Her skin tone matched the blouse exactly, and a blue thread ran through the fabric and through her hand. Her new scar and the blouse she sewed shared the same stitching, and Marisol realized she had become a commodity indistinguishable from the sweatpants she had sewn yesterday.
On that day, she began to save enough for a coyote to take her to the U.S. without mentioning a word of it to her mother or sister. On the day that she announced her intentions, she met two different reactions. Her mother screamed, Cómo se puede abandonarnos? Her sister asked, Cuándo puedo ir contigo?
A year later life didn’t feel much different. Her mother still criticized her decisions, and Tania still wondered when she could come live with her. Her Salvadoran high school diploma is meaningless while she’s undocumented, so she worked briefly at a garment factory Downtown until she landed at a job at an industrial laundromat. It’s not much better, but it’s different, which is sometimes better, Marisol mused.
After a half-hour of wandering the Galleria, tall bold lettering that sparked yellow caught Marisol’s eye. Persistent Bloom, it read. Diminutive mannequins of Tania’s size filled the storefront windows and wore dresses and shirts of all colors. Posters pressed against the windows with scenes of young girls strolling through town whilst carrying heavy shopping bags. Their pastel faces smiled the same shape as her little sister, only Tania smiled at raccoon families, chocolate treats, cloudy days that broke apart with the sun’s presence, and Christmases, even the ones that came without gifts. Tania rarely smiled at new clothes, Marisol supposed, because all of her clothes were Marisol’s hand-me-downs.
Marisol entered the store, and the racks and shelves of organized fabric made her dizzy. Identical shirts, sweaters and shoes hung and lay next to each other and made her think she was seeing quadruple. Mannequins posed inside the store sitting on benches and perusing through racks with their mouths pointed in the general direction of each other. The lights glared with a dull tenacity that reflected off the white tiles and walls and ceiling and made the whole store glow like a glossy magazine. If the mall was a hospital, then this was surgery under blinding lights, and she walked with careful strides anticipating the ether.
Marisol spotted in the corner of the store two bins that read in tiny letters: Clearance. A good compromise, she thought. She could get something nice for Tania and not get a lecture from her mother over wasteful spending. She plunged her hand in the bin and caught onto some flimsy fabric, and as she slowly pulled her hand out of the bin she swore for a second she wasn’t pulling out anything. The fabric shared the same color as her skin, and the thread that ran through ran in the same pattern as the scar that snaked through her hand. She checked the tag on the collar. Made in El Salvador.
Exactly the same, she thought. The fruits of her labor, $1.00 an hour, all wound up here in this surgery room for girls to sew themselves into the skin of the Persistent Bloom poster girls. She felt for a price tag and turned it over. $18 clearance. $35 regular price. She received somewhere under a dollar for a blouse that cost 35 dollars. Less than a dollar in a cramped, sweaty maquiladora where unyielding yells pierced her ears as needles punctured her skin for a flimsy blouse that cost 35 dollars in the states.
Marisol’s fists clenched the blouse into a ball and threw it onto a shelf nearby. She scrounged through the fabrics and checked their tags that all read the same. Made in El Salvador. $30. $45. $28. All the same. Made in El Salvador. Marisol had half a mind to set the bin on fire, and the rest of her mind told her to drag the bin with her and mail it in the big package back to her pueblo.
Near the shelf where she had thrown the brown blouse, a little girl the age and color of Tania plucked the blouse off the shelf and carried it towards the counter. Marisol would’ve thought it to be Tania if the girl hadn’t passed by a rack of clothing she already wore. At the counter, a middle-aged woman wearing a black designer coat waited for her. A black sun hat and large sunglasses covered her face, and when the girl tugged at her sleeves the woman removed her sunglasses and revealed a brown face the same as her girl. If you added years of stress and wrinkles, she would’ve looked the same as Marisol’s mother.
That it? the woman asked.
Sí, mamí, the girl said. Me gusta este blusa muchísima.
The woman’s shoulders tensed, and she gave the girl a sharp glare. Do you remember what I said about talking like that? the woman said. Not in school, not in public, and not when your father is around.
The girl frowned. Sorry, mommy, she said. I just want to practice like abuelita—um grandma said I should.
The woman rolled her eyes. And that’s why she still lives in the old neighborhood, and we live with your father. Your grandma doesn’t understand if we don’t throw away the old ways we’ll never—
The woman looked up from her daughter and locked eyes with Marisol. In her eyes Marisol saw someone familiar, someone with a sense of longing, someone with a sense of loss. Marisol caught a glimpse in the mirror of herself, still wearing her laundromat uniform under her hoody. She wondered who she resembled to this woman. Someone gone, for sure, but why? Gone of their own will, or gone with a lapse of time?
The woman put her sunglasses back on and said to her daughter, Come on. There’s nothing else you want, right?
I don’t think so, the girl said.
The mother and daughter paid for the brown blouse, and as they left the girl stared at her blouse and then back at the shelf where she grabbed it from. She caught a glimpse of Marisol, and the glimpse became a stare. The girl stopped in her tracks. The mother turned and walked back to collect her daughter and saw the object of her attention. She took her daughter’s hand, glanced at Marisol, and said to her daughter, Come on. There’s nothing else in here.
As the woman dragged the girl by the hand, the girl said, Are you sure, mamí?
I’m sure, the mother said.
Marisol shuffled out of the store dazed and looked both ways across the mall. She couldn’t spot mother or daughter inside of the ivory mall amongst the pale crowds.