Claudia D. Hernández - Knitting the Fog

PRAISE FOR KNITTING THE FOG

This debut gives tender and keen insight into the experience of migrating north to the US and the challenges a preteen faces integrating into the Promised Land.

ANA CASTILLO,

author of Black Dove: Mam, Mijo, and Me

Claudia D. Hernndezs exquisite new memoir is a breathtaking read. She is a beautiful storyteller, whose raw honesty sings on the page with a kind of fiery joy and longing of what it means to be a family.

KERRY MADDEN,

author of the Appalachian Maggie Valley Trilogy

La Diablita, the tomboy, wrote these searingly honest, la verdad, stories of crossing to the other side from her beloved Guatemala to her now home, the USA. Poesa is also sprinkled throughout, her prayers. Listen, youll believe every word as La Diablita knits the fog beyond man-made borders. The fog is love.

ALMA LUZ VILLANUEVA,

author of Song of the Golden Scorpion

An extraordinary hybrid collection of stunning poetry and even more awe-inspiring prose, evoking the universal journey of identity that we all go through as people, immigrants, and artists.

ADRIAN ERNESTO CEPEDA,

author of Flashes &Verses Becoming Attractions

This debut is so much more than an immigrants story. It is an ode to the resilience of the human spirit. A hymn to the power of poems and stories as agents of personal liberation and social change. In any language. Any culture. Anywhere in the world. Brava, Claudia!

LUCHA CORPI,

author of Confessions of a Book Burner: Personal Essays and Stories

Part torch song and part excavation, this is a coming-of-age story about a young girl from Guatemala crossing the border and making a life that is hers in America. It is also a book of our times, a story of struggle and resilience, a warrior song that refuses to look or run away.

MELISSA R. SIPIN,

editor in chief, TAYO Literary Magazine

KNITTING THE FOG

Claudia D. Hernndez

Published in 2019 by the Feminist Press

at the City University of New York

The Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

New York, NY 10016

feministpress.org

First Feminist Press edition 2019

Copyright 2019 by Claudia D. Hernndez

All rights reserved.

The author would like to thank Jos Hernndez Daz for his English translations of Mayuelass Mill, Tejiendo la niebla, Ardor de cuerpo, and Kim AyuVen Pa Ca.

No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First printing July 2019

Cover design by Suki Boynton

Cover photograph by Claudia D. Hernndez

Text design by Drew Stevens

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hernndez, Claudia D., author.

Title: Knitting the fog / Claudia D. Hernndez.

Description: [New York City : Feminist Press, 2019]

Identifiers: LCCN 2018049649 (print) | LCCN 2018059181 (ebook) | ISBN 9781936932559 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781936932542 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Hernndez, Claudia D. | Women authors, American--21st century--Biography. | Guatemalan American authors--Biography.

Classification: LCC PS3608.E76595 (ebook) | LCC PS3608.E76595 Z46 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049649

Para mi mam y mis hermanas.
And to those who continue
to cross to the other side,
leaving their loved ones behind.

CONTENTS

PART I

LIFE IN PARADISE, ALSO KNOWN AS HELL

Facts on How to Be Born: Life

This is what the partera told my mother the day I was born:

Boys are usually born facing down and girls are born facing up.

Not you, Mam scolded me. You came out of me, facing up, a girl.

But midway out, you spun your body around like the head of a barn

owl. Ghostly, pale. There were times you acted like a girl, other

times like a varn. Like a tomboy, I assured her.

Ta Soila buried my umbilical cord next to the tallest tamarindo

tree. I always wondered which one, they were all tall. Unlike

my sisters and I, distinct in size, shape, and temperamento. No

one questioned it; we assumed it had to do with our ancestors

genes. Two months later, after my birth, Mam registered me

under Claudia Denise Hernndez Ramos at the civil registry of

Guatemala. The secretary typed Penise instead of Denise. I grew

up pretending I was never given a middle name. At the age of

nineteen, I returned to Guatemala, alone, to change the P to a D.

I never questioned why Mam never did. On that trip, I discovered

my last name should have been Rossi instead of Hernndez. O mother.

I love you dearly.Thats all I was able to say to her over the phone.

Tempting Mud

Mam was always running away from something, someone. Her present, her past, the hunger that chased her, Paps drunkenness and obsessiveness, her mothers abandonment, the heat of Mayuelas or the coldness of Tactic, her beautyher long hair.

I remember when Mam would bathe Consuelo and me together in the pila, a washbasin made out of cement. I was four and Consuelo was six. We didnt have hot water; our pila was out in the patio surrounded by the shade of the tamarindo trees. The water came straight from the river, cold and fresh. Mam never allowed us to drink it.

Its stale! Youll grow a solitaria, a tapeworm, in your tummy, she would say.

The washbasin was filled with water. It had one sink on each side. One sink had a ribbed surface and it was usually used for hand-washing laundry. The other sink was for doing dishes. Its surface was smooth. Mam would sit both Consuelo and me on the ribbed sink so that we wouldnt slip. The pila was high off the ground.

Sindyyyy! Mam would yell. Help me rinse the girls.

Sindy was my oldest sistereight years older than me. She acted like my second mother whenever she babysat me and later on when Mam left. There were times I hated Sindy for that.

Mams fingernails were always long and sharp. She scrubbed my head furiously with the cola de caballo shampoo. The Mane n Tail always burned my eyes. We hadnt heard of baby shampoo in those days. Sindys job was to pour buckets of water over me. I felt like I was drowning every time the water hit the crown of my head. I somehow managed to breathe through my mouth as the see-through, soapy veil of water covered my face.