Since 2018, Restless Books has partnered with the New York Public Library and other public libraries to offer three-session workshops for immigrant writers. Hundreds of participants from around the world have joined in person and via Zoom. They engage with international immigrant literature published by Restless and produce short pieces—fiction, memoir, poetry—that are workshopped among all the participants. A few have been published in magazines, anthologies, and other places. These are the seventh and eighth of eight selected pieces by participants, in alphabetical order. Editing was done by students in the course “The ABCs of Publishing” at Amherst College: Sophia Grace Ewing, Deontavious Harris, Ella Peterson, Caroline Seitz, Kalidas Shanti, Camilo Toruño, Colin Weinstein, and Augusta Weiss.
—Ilan Stavans
The Wooden Horse and the Metallic Deer
by Florencia Ruiz Mendoza
My therapist died suddenly. Over the last seven years, he was the closest I had to an uncle. His hernia exploded, and he died three days later in the hospital. When I finally broke down in tears, I almost experienced an anxiety attack, I was suffocating, and the air did not suffice in my lungs. Within minutes I felt his voice speaking to me: “You know what to do. You’re not alone. You have what you need.” I looked for reassurance on my bookcases. In Sue William Silverman’s writing, I looked desperately for consolation in the loss of her own therapist.
Then I found a guide, a road pebbled with clarity. I had found an interlocutor, one of the greatest poets in the twentieth century: Pablo Neruda. However, it was not Neruda’s poetry but the story of the agonizing black swan that pulled my heart into his writing; the neck of the agonizing swan in Neruda’s adolescent hands; the swan was the bridge that brought me into Neruda’s early life memories; I could see Neruda’s boyish hands saving the dying black-necked swan, I could see that the twelve-year-old boy was certain the swan reeked of nostalgia. I could see with jarred precision a young man opening his senses and inspiration during those three long days of riding horses, around the frozen lakes and along the iced costs in the South of Chile, where it is wild, cold, savage, and indigenous. That place is called The Araucanía ((/ˌærɔːˈkeɪniə/ ARR aw-KAY-nee-ə, aɾau̯kaˈni.a). Pablo Neruda was my blessed interlocutor; the sensitive solitary boy whose bones were nurtured by the deadly humidity of the eternal rains of Imperial del Sur.
The young man attacked that damp and gray melancholy with poetry. Neruda revealed to us that growing up in a land that is always rainy and cold, childhood is long and static. Even the stars were wet in Neruda’s world.
After the travels, after the fame, Neruda came back to his childhood town in Chile, in Temuco, a leather shop had survived: at the entrance there was an old wooden horse staring at the visitor; time stood still at the horse’s brownish and cracked feet, the boy’s hands and the hands of the famous poet caressed the old horse that never went anywhere. The wooden horse at the leather shop in Temuco waited for his old friend, the one who pet him with that famous hand that wrote sublime poetry.
My anti-gentrification corner is in my childhood park in Mexico City. The Park’s official name is Francisco Villa, the hero of the 1910 Mexican revolution, its nickname is “The Park of the Deer.” There is a wide circled blue fountain. Its bottom is painted in bright blue and the borders were decorated with arabesque turquoise tiles. In the heart of the fountain two deer made of cheap metal stand majestically on a three meter-high pedestal. Unlike Neruda, I cannot pet them for they are in the heart of the fountain and neither is my hand famous, nevertheless they are still my friends, always waiting for me to come back.
Just like Temuco in Chile, Portales in Mexico City changed dramatically over the last four decades: wider avenues, hospitals, new subway station, apartment buildings, etc., but my metallic deer are still there. Covering their corroded metal skin, a legacy of the falling rains that had showered the statues for a half a century. My deer are fit, their feet are muscular, their bodies are slender but voluptuous; they are identical twins, they are looking away from each other; actually it seemed that one of them was about to fly away, it was looking away, it seemed hypnotized staring at the firmament of Mexico City’s foggy nocturnal sky sprinkled by a few stars that looked like confetti: pink, light orange, blue, white. My favorite deer was the one whose right horn was broken; “Look at him, poor him, I love him.” He’s now broken forever.
Like the little girl. I knew I’d be fine as long as the deer remained there to give me reassurance that a few things, a least very few things stay where they belong forever, until they die, until they are destroyed.
First I write, then I breathe.
Florencia Ruiz Mendoza (Mexico City) lives in New York City and has been a human rights advocate and community organizer.
What Would It Be Like If He Lived
by Melissa Veluz
“What would it be like if he lived?” Dwayne asks.
I was surprised that he asked that question. Dwayne always was curious about that time in my life, but he never probed or pushed knowing that I held that time sacred, protected it, kept it in a glass box to preserve and view from the outside.
It was two and a half years after Willis passed when Dwayne entered my life. He knows that if he will be with me, Willis will be a presence. The man had been part of my life for almost twenty years, after all, and will always be an integral part of who I am. A fierce believer of legacy and family lineage, Dwayne wants my boys to remember their father, honor him and use his life to guide them into manhood. There is a sense of sadness Dwayne felt for us, grieving for what we had lost and the life we could have had, a sense of guilt that Willis had to lose his life for him to have a one with us.
I look at the boys sitting on top of each other on the sofa. Asante is a lanky eight- year-old with long curly black locks bouncing on his head. He wears a wide playful grin on his face as he lays flat on his brother, who is resting on his stomach on the couch. Both kids are laughing uncontrollably now. During our months in lockdown, Ajani has grown taller and chiseled, his voice dropping a couple of octaves. Hormones in full effect, emotions are volatile in the house. While in so many ways still a kid, Ajani is evolving into this young man I am not quite ready to meet but have to face on a daily basis.
It wasn’t an easy road these past eight years being a single mom. One becomes accustomed to the tag-team life you have with a partner, life tasks efficiently handled by someone without having to worry about it.
The night before he died was a typical one, the two of us planning the weekend’s activities.
“Go ahead,” I said, “go on the ride.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes, go,” I answered. Since the baby came, it had been harder to go on these rides with his crew, a group of men in their forties, mostly fathers like Willis, who had taken up the hobby of cycling and navigating routes throughout the Los Angeles area. He bought a brand-new bike a couple of years before, and since then, his love for cycling had been renewed.
He reluctantly agreed to go on the ride. I was considering starting another swim class the next morning. Having a newborn didn’t allow much room for extracurriculars. Between the two jobs he worked and taking care of the baby, Ajani, and me, he didn’t have much time for himself. And yet, as much as he wanted to head for the Calabasas hills on that bike, he would put my needs first before his.
It was agreed he would go on the ride, come back, take our older son to the university for his swim lesson and then take both boys to his company picnic afterwards. I would leave for a work retreat and get back early evening.
Willis nudged me early in the morning, baby in his arms. “It’s time to feed him,” he said. I took the warm cuddly bundle from him. Willis was ready to go in his cycling gear, newly purchased from a site he found online a few weeks ago. I reclined on the sofa in the family room, my eyes closing lightly as it was still quite early. The baby laid quietly on my lap, latched on my breast having his morning meal. Willis kissed me on my lips and walked out the door. That was the last time I saw and felt my husband alive. Willis lost his life to a cycling accident that morning.
I’ve replayed this scenario over and over again in my head in the past eight years in hopes that there would be a different ending. I change the details, points of decision that may have altered the outcome. What if I insisted on taking the swim class? What if I made him stay home? I would have felt a little selfish, but at least he would have stayed alive.
If he lived, the ebb and flow of our days would have remained the same, the constant changing of shifts, taking turns in the maintaining and managing our daily activities. Willis would have come home, exhilarated from having had the opportunity to get on the bike and spend time with his crew. For Willis, it was not always about the activity but who you are with while doing it. He loved being around people. He also loved spending time with his boys. He enjoyed being a father and always put his family first. He would have taken Ajani to the swim lesson and then showed off both boys to his co-workers at the company picnic.
If he lived, Willis would have fully integrated himself in his family’s life as he always had. He would have been engaged in the boys’ school activities and sports. He would get to know all their teachers and the parents of their classmates. They would go on hikes, bike rides and different adventures. He would have important talks with Ajani as he becomes a man. He would have rap battles with Asante, the rising poet. He would have been fully supportive of whatever I had going on at the time, whether it be attending events at my work or calling stage cues during Filipino dance productions or encouraging my aspirations of going back to school. We would go salsa dancing. We would travel to some new place. He would take my parents to the airport. He would make sure we ate three meals. He would fix the fence.
This exercise of what if’s is both glorious and heartbreaking. The scenes of that day play on loop in my head, imagining different endings, with events projecting a much happier outcome of normalcy rather than the abrupt tragedy that has decidedly changed my life forever. The wishful thinking is a longing for regularity that life would’ve remained the same. That dream comes crashing with the reality that no matter how often I replay the story, I can never be able to modify the way it ends. He is still gone and his absence is permanent. It is a void so vast that it takes my breath away every time I think of it.
Yet, I still find myself breathing because I have no choice but to do so. My body forces me to take the next breath to remind me that while Willis is no longer here, I am still alive.
And with each labored breath comes a tentative step into the future. Uncertain but hopeful, fearful but with faith. Willis loved me in such a way that made me feel like my life mattered, that my being was of incredible value in spite of my tremendous faults and weaknesses. I am awed by the thought of such a gift, baffled that the universe deemed me deserving of such a blessing. There has to be meaning and purpose living on this other side of life. “What is it?” I ask each morning as I awake and at night as I fall asleep.
Dwayne sits in front of me across the table. He is a kind and patient companion in this new reality of mine. Willis’s ghost permeates any space I stand in, and Dwayne must coexist with it. I used to think that it would bother him, that Willis’s presence in my life, all the memories imprinted in me that motivate my actions and choices, would be considered a disruption as we create our own narrative and story. Remarkably, Dwayne welcomes Willis‘s spirit. He accepts it, respects it and honors it. “How often do you talk to the boys about Willis? Do they know him? There should be more of his pictures and things in their rooms,” he enthusiastically suggests.
Dwayne grew up not knowing his father or his father’s side of the family. He longed for that relationship, but his father chose to dismiss him and not to acknowledge him until it was too late. After many years of effort to reach out and connect, Dwayne gave up on that endeavor, finding his own way as he became a young man and eventually rising up to become a successful adult and businessman. The vacuum of living without the influence of a father still haunts him, constantly asking what could’ve been if his paternal side of the family was more engaged in his well-being and development. Dwayne wants the boys to know that they were loved and wanted, that their father would have done anything for them.
“What would it be like if he lived?” Dwayne asks again, the question still hanging in the air.
“Life would have stayed the same,” I respond, “if he was still alive.” How inconsequential that question is now to wonder the what if’s when Willis will never be back. Why entertain the thoughts of how he would have lived today? Why would it matter? Perhaps the answers to those questions lie in the lessons that come from how Willis lived: to live life fully, to love deeply, and to serve others with generosity of heart and spirit. Guideposts for all of us to live by.
Dwayne gives me a thoughtful look. He smiles at me with sympathetic, faintly sorrowful eyes. He squeezes my hand and rises from the table, and then heads towards the boys in the living room, where he engages them in a pillow fight. I sit alone in the kitchen, quietly listening as joyful noises fill the house. I close my eyes, take a deep breath. I get up to clear a sink full of dishes, a tear rolling gently down my face.
Melissa Veluz (Philippines) lives in Los Angeles, California where she is a mother to two boys and an advisor to student leaders at UCLA. For over 25 years, she has been active in Filipino community arts spaces serving as a performer, instructor and staff for Kayamanan Ng Lahi Philippine Folk Arts. She is also formerly a board member for Association for the Advancement of Filipino American Arts and Culture (FilAm Arts).