Paper Bodies

Edited Proposal

2007-05-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be addressing a part of my life that, for one reason or another, I haven't wanted to touch again. I worked at flea markets, first as a hired hand for one vendor and then as a cashier, and ended up pretty pessimistic about it all. Using a few diary entries I found at my parents' home I'm going to reconnect the dots for the reader--what drove me, what I did, and why I wouldn't touch it afterwards.

I've chosen to link National Flea Market Association because its idea of a flea market is very different from my experience, and I think seeing this and my essay will balance out evenly.

Mosqueda is the man now notoriously known for speeding and causing a major accident, causing crippling traffic. What most disturbs me is the immediate anger towards the driver. They now say that the background checks were not thorough enough because of prior convictions (that had nothing to do with his ability to drive). Yet, since 1990, he has turned his life around and tried to provide for his family. People would prefer to blame this man and try to make it so that a person of his background can't work such a job (although, as mentioned before, his previous lapses in judgment had nothing to do with an inability to drive). I think it's relevant to my experiences, because I knew many people who worked stalls at the market because they could find nothing else.

Finally, child labor laws is an important link because it gives a brief overview of the laws restricting child labor and why (desire to keep fair education standards). It's just good to know as a general rule.

Persuasion, Pointer Perspective

2007-04-22T00:14:00.001-07:00

The Dinner Conversation, as observed by a Pointer

“We ate like savages,” Wentworth says over his brandy. Because he hadn’t had accommodations fitting his station, that was savagery? Lord, what a laugh, but not for his wit!

I can see the dinner accommodations quite well from where I’m sitting on the floor. Wentworth’s got the women on his side of the table tittering and simpering at every description. They lean close, eyes wide, waiting for more of his hyperbolic talk as if they were waiting for a tasty morsel he might fling for them. Even I wouldn’t stoop so low.

But there is one who isn’t fawning like a (forgive the phrase) bitch in heat. She sits between the Sir and the Missus of the home, already a good sign. The Admiral’s in good spirits, sharing confidence with the girl who watches Wentworth cautiously. The Admiral’s a man can shoot anything out of the sky, clear or cloudy, and that speaks a great deal about a man’s character. Seeing how he’s kind to Anne, and she’s a reserved girl, I’ve got a soft spot for her myself.

Finally Wentworth steps off and the Admiral’s wife, Sophie, speaks up. She’s gone all over, she says in so nice and learned a voice as you could ever hope to hear. It’s fine education to know what is the West Indies and what isn’t (and Wentworth made no distinction). Says she’s been around five times, and when Anne (bless her heart) asks after her health Sophie says only when she was without the Admiral. Wentworth may go and say what he pleases, but the lady is refined and well-spoken. I’d prefer the company of Anne or Sophie to Wentworth’s any day, and if he comes too close I’ll let him know myself.

Trip with Family

2007-04-22T00:13:00.000-07:00

A CD made specifically for this trip is playing as we—sisters (older and younger), father, and mother—go down the 10 East on our magical family adventure. I made the CD using my carefully chosen music. Just a Girl by No Doubt is playing. I think it’s their last great album.

“I don’t see why you’re not interested.” My mother says. She’s sitting in the backseat with me and my little sister is our barrier.

It takes me a minute to realize she’s talking to me, and why.

“Ma, not today,” my sister replies from behind the wheel. She has to drive, she says. She gets carsick otherwise.

“I just don’t understand why she doesn’t want to have babies.” Her hand reaches across my little sister and touches my frayed bangs. “You were all such lovely babies.”

She doesn’t need men, Pop grouses from the passenger side. She’s got her Papa.

How much longer, asks my little sister. No one answers her.

“Are we really going to die without seeing our grandchildren?” She looks at me, and I just keep my mouth shut.

“Ma! Do we really have to do this now?” Paulina asks while merging to the left lane.

Where are we now, Ceci asks. Hell, I want to say, but that’s a blanket statement.

“This is between Dani and me. Just drive.” Mama says, still looking at me.

She wants to make sure none of her kids turned out lez, Paulina says in English so that she won’t understand.

“Why aren’t you talking?” She gives my arm the tiniest shove. “Don’t you want to say something?”

“Ovaries.” I say, finally. It’s met with a near-united shout of disgust. Paulina didn’t think I was so crude, she says. Pop didn’t think I knew that word in Spanish. Mama just gapes a while.

What’s that, Ceci asks, already knowing it’s a word she shouldn’t know. I can see it in the way she’s smiling and leaning into me.

It’s Disneyland, where we’re going, I say. Ovaries are Disneyland.

It doesn’t make sense, but it changes the topic.

“Say it again,” Paulina warns, “and I’m leaving you there.”

Ceci tries to say it, but it’s garbled.

I swear to God, she says. We all do.

500 word Place Description

2007-04-22T00:12:00.000-07:00

There is only one religion. Faiths spring aplenty in ethnically mulched counties—Buddhists, Sikhists, Christians and Catholics and whatever schisms come few or far between them, atheist and agnostic and Jewish—as many faiths as people. But for all of these folks and everyone else, there is only one thing to be devout to and worship religiously. It comes in paper and metal and check, and it’s the difference between a first pick present for your kid or a runner up.

If money is religion, then there is one church to go down to on early Sunday mornings for those few who’re desperate enough to try supplicating to god and good weather. Vans of questionable origin, piled with things that hope to be great finds, flood in before the sunlight can. Men and women down on their luck are awake and setting up before even the flies come.

The set up’s simple. Steel poles cemented into large coffee cans provide the frame and blue plastic tarp serves as the roof. It’ll work to keep the sun off their wares and their bodies for a while. Their goods—old toys or books or furniture or, even, poultry—get displayed out on top of old sheets on the ground (the chickens get cages—city law). Everything is marked down as low as they’re willing to go on paper on Sunday morning.

They. The down and out descamisados who have useless shit and will try to make something even from that. All color and gender aside, they’re the down and still praying fervently at this rundown asphalt church with no walls and no holy water. Please let there be something nice at the table this week. Let me pay the electric bill this month. I want to save up money and marry Amparo.

Please let me come out on top. One phrase or another, this is what it means to follow money into a Sunday church. And I am no better (who is, really?). An open-air flea market doesn’t attract elite clientele. The word ‘flea’ is the one that sticks to your body and brain like a bug and you can’t get rid of it. Not flee. Flea. Tiny and insignificant and an irritation on a larger animal, we’re here just the same.

We’re united under the grace of money. The smell of gasoline and chicken shit is our frankincense. Dizzying and nauseating but bringing us closer to green god, it is tolerable. Even summer heat and stink and the wind kicking everything up are acceptable. Our god is an angry god, Old School, and in the open air of Chino Hills we see that divine, whimsical hand at work. It taketh, it giveth, it fucketh with. Sometimes, it’s in that order.

Everyone’s got good days, everyone’s got bad days. The people setting up say this, shrugging their shoulders, when they know it’s not going to go well. On the days when they sell well no one quite remembers the balance; they’re too busy being on top of their world. Then they fall. It’s how everything must go, and no one is immune. Being the gatekeeper to such a place, I assumed I might’ve been.

Assignment One

2007-04-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

Five in the morning should not, in fact, exist. It is a gray area between sleep and wakefulness that I could do without—and it’s at five in the morning that I need to leave the Roble parking lot and head to the 84 East. 84 East, then the 680 North and 580 East, just to wind up facing the monotony of the five for six hours. At four in the morning, when my cell phone’s alarm officially rings in the start of this day, pleasantness does not exist.

Schlep is the name of this game. Bags were packed the night before, clothes and old books shoved aligned like a Tetris game, and my goldfish is currently swimming comfortably in a Tupperware container. TS Eliot’s my only passenger, and it wouldn’t do to have him spill out of his bowl and flop for his fishy life if I make any sharp turns, so he’s safely sealed. It said so on the cover when I bought it at Wal-Mart: “guaranteed not to leak.” Everything is packed; it just has to be hauled down three flights of stairs at 4:30 in the morning.

When I wake up, and I think this is true of everyone, there’s no strength in my body. My body’s a machine left cool for too long, and it takes proper maintenance to get it going again. But there’s no time for that this morning. It’s brush, dress, comb and go, and that’s all there’s room for. I don’t want to hit traffic, and my folks know when to expect me. There’s a timetable to work with.

It’s only three flights, but it’s four-thirty in the morning and the machinery is whining at its sudden use. Lift, pull, down—these are accomplished with limbs stiff and reluctant. First, the large suitcase containing volumes of my sophomore year goes down. The little vestigial wheels of the case clack and bounce down the steps in my carelessness. They throw the damn thing off balance as we go down, jerking my arm in strange, slight angles behind me. No one else is awake; most students have already gone home for winter holidays. The hallways are lit and lonely when I walk by them. I’m the only one making any noise. The clunk of silly little wheels bouncing down stairs is a quick and uneven meter; it just feels long to my arm.

The first one’s the hard one. It’s big and clumsy and the machine’s barely been turned on. Once the last step is taken and the door is opened and the four thirty air is chilling my hair upright, I know the machine is up and running. It emits smoky exhaust into the night air, marking the difference in temperatures between them. Warmed up, it’s just a shove and the suitcase is in. All that’s left is a quick trip for TS Eliot and my laptop. One sloshes as I go down, the other carefully resting in a padded sling backpack at my hip. The laptop will go in the passenger’s seat, but Eliot’s going to be left on the passenger floor. I know the advertisement guarantees it but I’m not going to push it. Everything gets strapped down and secured and I turn the key in the ignition and slide out of Stanford. It’s not even five o’clock yet—I’m already making good time.

There is no one to talk to and nothing except music to distract me. University Avenue leads out and towards the 84 East, and the only indicator I’m on the 84 at all for a while are the signs interspersed on city streets. It’s a test on my focus before I getting on the 680. Left, right, left, straight on—if I make this trip a few more times I’ll be used to it, and not worry so much about the possibility of missing the next sign. Then the 84 changes—it’s not city streets but winding uphill.

I follow whatever my headlights can illuminate up ahead with my eyes and car, and try not to worry so much. I won’t hit a tree or go off-roading that way. Rock slide area. A yellow sign with a buck’s silhouette. Tree branches riding on air currents. I’m so focused on these, on looking forward, that I don’t look back from me rear view at all. Forward’s just about all I can work with when it’s so early and I haven’t slept and I’m sure there’s no one else on the road.

The 680 approaches and I curve the car as the ramp instructs, then straighten it out for a bit. There’s hills to the right of me, emerald even in the dark, with a few cows and new enviro-friendly wind mills interspersed. They are white, rather shinning, as they wave me by. The road, however, is flat, though not as flat as everyone’s told me the 5’s going to be—as if warning me will improve this trip at all. It’s not as though I could turn back.

I switch over to the right lane and enter the 580E. This is all a weird way to go south-- east, north, then east again—but this is the way google maps promises I’ll get there without much hassling. The sun is rising but I’ve already pulled the visor down ahead of time. I’m fine. I smell methane and I forgot to buy any water for this trip but I’m fine.

The 580E becomes the 5S. I didn’t know it did that, and I don’t really know the names of freeways and highways in the Bay area, even though I’ve lived here for three years. Each one just led to somewhere close and that was good enough. Now I’m seeing one lead into another and pass places that look like cows outnumber the people. Gonzales. There’s a town called Gonzales, and up ahead is Los Pasos. I’m visiting relatives I never knew lived so nearby at all.

If I’d stayed in San Bernardino it would’ve stayed that way. But my folks are there in San Bernardino, and my sisters, all living in one house like a beautiful sitcom. The Latino Tanners or Spanish Seavers, all under one roof. For that reason, I’m driving past cow and glen and 76s. I have to be home.