Before by Carmen Boullosa

Author:Carmen Boullosa [Boullosa, Carmen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781941920299
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Published: 2016-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

8

My school motto was serviam (the hymn said: serviam, forever serviam, though life may lead us faraway). We were told ad nauseam that serviam meant serve, to work toward the glory and veneration of God, and to be of service to one’s neighbor.

The word was written on the lower part of the school shield that lived with us daily on the white blouses and gray sweaters of our uniform: green and gold, embroidery thick like a growth, superimposed like a second heart of unerring goodness. It was at Esther’s suggestion that they organized a drawing competition for possible interpretations of the school motto.

This wasn’t Esther’s first intervention; now, as on other occasions, she had interfered out of a sense of indignation: las monjas, the mothers, the sisters, or las madres (depending on who it was) had allowed a fifth-year teacher (my teacher) to set up a doll contest: the girl with the prettiest doll would win. The idea hugely annoyed Esther: Why reward something that didn’t depend on a girl’s will but was something brought from a shop? All the girls (except ourselves because we came empty-handed to signal Esther’s protest) arrived with brand-new dolls competing with the most expensive, the one nobody had ever seen before, the doll from the most distant land with a designer brand.

The dolls were paraded before the eyes of the teachers who’d been elected as competition judges, who observed them perched on the hands of owners who’d never played with them, never changed their clothes, never cradled them, and never combed their hair so they would have a chance to win.

As an act of protest Esther proposed a competition in which the girls’ skills would be valued and “not their parents’ money or travels.” She spoke to la madre Gabriela (being Cuban, she wasn’t a Mother; being vigorous and intelligent, she wasn’t a nun) and convinced her: “sensitivity,” “intelligence,” “work,” “the value of work”—what other arguments did she use? I picked out these words from their conversation on the sunny terrace when Esther handed her a drawing that she gave as a present because she liked her so much: who knows how long they’d talked before I saw them, but they certainly loved each other dearly.

The graphic representation of serviam opened Esther’s studio—for my sisters and me—on a single afternoon.

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