from Trevor’s window - novel in progress

from Trevor’s window - a novel in progress 

His abuela’s name was Izote. 

The izote is the national flower of El Salvador. It is white and fragrant, with thick pointed leaves. It is born again out of it’s own injured trunk...it never dies. It is a stubborn flower full of a will to live.

She was like the izote in so many ways.

She was beautiful and stubborn. 

In one way, though, she was not like the izote.

She had not been able to be born again out of the wound of El Salvador’s civil war.

She had simply and terribly disappeared, like so many poor people from so many places across the farms and fields of the wounded land.

Hilcias never met her, but he knew her from the stories his abuelo and mamí told him about her along the migratory road.

His mamí wore him on her back with a tattered piece of cloth as she trudged the rows of tomatoes and peaches along the South Carolina coast. 

He felt the heat that weighed on her shoulders. 

He saw the dirt and blisters on her feet as she walked on and on, picking and bending, bending and picking, until the sun set on the horizon. 

He listened to this song she sang about his abuela, Milanga del Fusilado, The Ballad of the Forgotten.

No me pregunten quién soy

ni si me habían conocido

los sueños que había querido

crecerán aunque no estoy.

Ya no vivo pero voy

en lo que andaba soñando

y otros que siguen peleando

harán nacer otras rosas

en el nombre de esas cosas

todos me estarán nombrando.

(Don’t ask who I am 

Or if you knew me 

The dreams I held dear 

Continue without me.

My life is finished but I carry on

in those who still dream

and  struggle. They will grow new flowers 

And in the name of those

I too will be named.)

He came to know her through his mamí’s heart, his mamí’s feet and his mamí’s music.

What a beautiful way to get to know another person.

His abuelo would sit beside his sleeping mat each night and tell him stories about El Salvador and his abuela. 

“The land was beautiful,” he said, “With green fields on the mountain that stretched as far as your eyes could see. They stretched all the way to the river that was as blue and crisp as the morning sky. 

We were happy there. The land was ours to use, the land was ours to nurture. The corn, the beans and the mangoes were ours to eat and sell and store away for the dry season.

Your abuela was so beautiful standing in those fields. I used to stop and stare at her, Hilcias, and my heart would beat as fast as a hummingbird’s heart for her beauty and my eyes would drop little tears of joy for her love.

She was the field.

She was the hummingbird.

She was the Izote.

She was beauty.

She was love.”