Inscriptions
They were laying on the concrete roof peering over the edge, the town siren ringing as they looked into my bedroom window and spoke into their walkie talkies-an unnecessary act given the fact that all three of them were just inches from each other. Any stranger, not familiar with their daily routine, would have thought the boys were trying to save my cousins and I from sort of impending danger. But they were not, so every morning that summer we would kick them off the property-our nine, ten and thirteen year old voices floating smoothly behind us through the hot humid air as we chased them from our roof onto theirs.
Every day was pretty much the same in San Francisco de Macoris, a small town in the Dominican Republic. Had I known where I’d be now then, perhaps I would have treasured the island, the leaves that swayed in the timeless air, the walks down the worn out curves, the drives up and down mountains.
In the town, motorcycles hum through the roads, honking as they dodge the people that spill over and onto the streets because the sidewalks are so narrow. Women sell pastries and fruits from large wick baskets that sit perfectly on their heads. Conchos crowd up to nine passengers at once, the ones at the end holding the doors that hangs on a few wires, while the rest of the passengers fan themselves or sing along to the radios of passing cars. A young boy shines shoes in Duarte Park in front of the municipal building, carefully resting the older man’s feet on his tin coffee can, his hands, smothered in shoe shinning grease, quickly yet carefully tracing every curve of the shoe. Little old ladies, children and families pour in and out of the Santa Ana Church, the large cathedral that towers above all else. And amongst its shadow rests a house, its small gallery decorated with poinsettia trees and marble tiles.
On one day the neighborhood kids gather and play in an inflatable pool. Splashing a mixture of euphoria and water onto the people walking on the sidewalk. One small girl, her skin whiter than the rest, had her mother pulling up her blue one piece bathing suit. Had an outsider been looking the would have seen the mother trying to plead with the four year-old to wait longer for the swimming suit to fit-they would seen the mother chase the child throughout the room, past another, down a hall, across a living room and out to the gallery, all with a bottle of sunscreen in her hand. A grandfather sits as still as the mango tree that stands planted out back, watching the actions of the world around him. The tree has stood there for years, providing smiles to generations of a family, a shade for the kids that play on the roof of the home. A tree that once gave off a distinct sweet mango smell that traveled through the carved out holes of a living room wall and into the nose of the grandfather that sat on a wooden rocking chair-a smell that stuck to the mouth that politely asked his family for favors.
A picture of Mozart still hangs above his chair, the chair that used to rock to the sounds of classical music, a chair that only the once a conductor, father, grandfather and husband sat in. A chair whose wood probably smells as much like mangos as the bark of the tree that rests in the backyard. He doesn’t call the little girl anymore, the granddaughter who ran in front of him leaving drops of sunscreen on the floor, the teen he tried to impress with his English, the young woman who wishes she could tell him all. He doesn’t yell at the boys that use to bother his nieces and granddaughter, nor at beggars who walked by so that he can give them money. He never carved the letters of his granddaughter’s name into the tiles of the home for her to see when she came back. Instead all she sees when she runs after her neighbors or every time the town siren ring and she runs past the hole filled wall is the rocking chair, all she hears are the sounds of the vehicles, all she smells is the sweet mango scent, all she tastes is the humid air and all she feels is the touch of the hot ground on her feet.
In the small town people came and went. In the small town she came and went, but the coming part hasn’t been the same. The town, the palms, and farms haven’t changed. Neither have the fragments of the childhood she looks back on. But the carefree wonder has, because now its all about the preservation and remembering. Its all about the carving, the place, and the details that left the mark. Her grandfather knew that much. But I guess he never found a way to inscribe it all for me.
