Intaglio by Roberta Fernández

Author:Roberta Fernández
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 1990-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Leonor

Mist-filled Moon

rising,

rising.

The odor of sea foam

meets the fog.

And Coyote out collecting

dream fragments along the shore.

Judith Ivaloo Volborth

Leonor

I

Leonor thought the lizards that scurried up and down the south wall of her house had been brought on by the flood. The house had always attracted the transparent creatures but in the last year they had proliferated to epidemic proportions. “That’s all I need,” she mumbled over and over, for just when she had finally gotten her garden back into shape, Orso’s and Orión’s room had caught fire. It had not been a costly fire as it had not spread to the rest of the house, but she had lost several boxes of old papers that were stored in the closet where the light had short-circuited. Still, the flames had badly damaged the south wall and parts of it had cindered through to the outside. When the fire had died down, Leonor and Aura and I had watched the lizards run through the glowing walls. To our amazement they had remained unscathed.

With the rebuilding of the wall the little reptiles seemed to be attracted to the fresh stucco and had started to multiply even faster than before. Fascinated with the lizards, Aura and I started a new game. First we’d poke at a few to make them change color; then we’d watch them disappear into the ferns along the wall. When they would come out of hiding we’d remain still until they had gotten accustomed to our presence; then, we’d quickly move in on them, grabbing as many as we could by their tails. Most of our captives wiggled themselves free but we always managed to clutch on to some. These would give a tiny squeak right before they’d instinctively free themselves by breaking off their tail; then they’d rush off into the ferns once again.

Budding adolescents, we used that silly game as an excuse to hold on to our childhood for a while longer; as a consequence, it also led to our first lizard collection. From the start neither Aura nor I were interested in preserving whole lizards, especially after our first catch dried up inside the milk bottle where we had stored them. We soon discovered we could keep the lizards alive if we punched tiny holes on the lids of jars, then fed them spiders, snails or scorpions. That finding did not pique our interest in the least; so, we decided instead to collect lizard tails. At first we simply kept them dried up in our jars but soon we got bored with our inaction and began to string the tails onto bamboo sticks with thin nylon thread, giggling as we alternated lizard tails with multicolored cotton strips. Eventually we hung the banners outside the windows in our room and chatted for hours while the tails and cotton pieces fluttered in the wind. Unlike our mothers, Leonor seemed amused with our decorations and even promised to introduce us soon to her own hideaway, her house of mirrors where all fantasies became attainable if one but set her doubts aside for a brief moment.

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