ORANGE MESSIAHS by Scott A. Sonders (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

to their praise and condemnation. I have read the letters that he wrote to his sister, Ramona, and his best friend, Jonah.

Jonah. Jonah of the Bible. Jonah of the Whale Story. There is no one I know better. I will let Jonah tell his own story. He is almost too cavalier about this undertaking. He is not bothered by the publicity. After all, he was never a member of the family. Unbeknownst to him, he was my first love. He is also the one who Ramona loves most in this world. And Ramona has always been the one I love most. So you see, it’s easy, just simple arithmetic. These stories are inevitable.

It is said that confession is good for the soul. I am herein confessing that I’ve secretly been in love with Jonah since I was three and he was twenty-three. I have been close to him. I know his version of this narrative that I am about to tell. This history will be told by an amateur detective, inquisitive by nature, a know-it-all by personality.

Just by beginning this chronicle, my soul feels slightly more cleansed. But the purification is incomplete. I will disinfect my insides with the continued telling of this story. These words will become my purgative. I will regurgitate the legend of my kin and hope that once again I will be able to sleep.

I have taken their statements. I am filing my reports. I am writing this for my soul and my sanity. I am writing this for Travis W. And I will speak for those who cannot speak. I will speak for my mute sister and for those who have been silenced. I will speak for those who dwell on the outside of the inner circle and for the ones who live on their knees. I will write and speak: in my voice, in their voice, in the voice of Carla and Ray and Ramona and Jonah. I will speak for those who can not or will not—and because this is their story.

* * * * * * * * *

This story is about roads and where they take us. There were roads in America long before you and I and our parents and grandparents can remember. There were roads even before Hernan Cortez came looking for gold. Even then there were already men and women and roads and those who searched for gold.

In the time just after the great pre-Columbian gods Quetzlquatl and Culculcan had lived in the land but before Cortez had come to conquer, there was a comely Aztec princess named Iztachuatl, “the sleeping lady,” and her handsome consort, Popocatepetl, who was a mighty warrior. Together, they resolved to search for the fabled, seven lost cities of gold.

They went out on their quest and, after a time, came to a small hut by a fork in the road. A crone lived there, blind in both eyes but famed for the ability to see with her heart what others could not see with their eyes. The handsome Popocatepetl asked the philosopher crone if she knew the way to the golden cities, to which she replied, “Yes. There are two journeys that will take you to your destiny. One is the road that is long but short and the other is the road that is short but long. Choose one.”

Being in a great hurry for success, the warrior unhesitantly chose the “short” road. But the princess thought for awhile, about the seeming paradox posed by the crone, and chose the “long” road.

Popocatepetl set off ambitiously on the “short but long road.” Soon, though, he discovered that it was almost entirely uphill. Indeed, the road was strewn with thorns and sharp stones that tore at his feet. And the glare of the hot, unshielded sun blazed down on his back and burned the skin of his face.

Desperately, Popocatepetl searched for a shaded place to rest. There was none. He searched for a cool spring to quench his awful thirst. There was none. And, after not much more than a day on the “short” road, the warrior, with the last remnants of his strength, crawled into the golden city and collapsed.

The princess, Iztachuatl, set off carefully down the “long but short road.” The path was perfectly flat and carpeted in soft, green moss. It was shaded in its entirety by opulent trees that were adorned with fragrant tropical flowers and rich ripe fruit. And the entire way was paralleled by a meandering, babbling brook. The journey took the princess several days. But it was with such ease, that she arrived in the golden city refreshed.
And it was there she found her Aztec lover, who she thought to be dying. In grief, she lay down and fell asleep. After sleeping for a very long while, her body became a hill and then a mountain.

When at last Popocatepetl revived, he saw that the sleeping body of Iztachuatl had been transformed into a mountain, so he too lay down in sorrow, waiting for her to awake, until he also became a mountain. The smoke, that then poured out of him, was his tears.

So this is a story of roads. And it is the story of the choices we make at the twists and turns. Sometimes we are wise and careful and sometimes we are headstrong and careless. Sometimes the road is good and sometimes it is not. But the road itself is indifferent. ••


Story III

BEYOND JUAREZ
(as written in Ramona Batista’s journal)


December 11th, 1971:

This is my first official entry. I’ve never kept a journal before. In fact, I’ve never considered it. J-O-U-R-N-A-L. It sounds like a fashionable way of saying “diary.” And I’ve always thought that girls that kept diaries were a little too close to living in Barbie City, if you know what I mean. Oh, no. I can’t believe it. I just wrote, “If you know what I mean.” As if I was talking to someone. As if I’d ever let someone read what I’d write here. Besides, I’m only starting this journal because my new therapist says it’ll be “a good exercise for me.” She says that it’ll help me, and I’m quoting her here, “to work through my crisis.” – Oh yeah, when I say “new therapist,” I actually mean first therapist. That’s also something different for me. Pretty scary, too.

I’ve only known one other person in my life who went to a head shrinker. Linda Cifuentes. She stuttered and had really bad B.O. I guess I shouldn’t say anything about speech impediments because, Carlos, that’s my brother, he stutters too, but that’s only when he gets really unglued about anything hidden deep inside of him that he thinks is on the verge of coming out and embarrassing him.

He hates being embarrassed, or humiliated, more than anything. Maybe even more than death. I think he’d do anything, and I really mean ANYTHING to avoid humiliation. But I’m not going to get into that right now, because it’s a huge story. And it’s sort of part of the story that’s got me going to this therapist in the first place.

Okay, my therapist says that I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say it out loud. I have to be able to write the words down. I have to be able to do that until I can say the words and remain calm. I have to start this now so later I can think about the situation with perfect “equanimity.”

Cool word, equanimity. I like people that can use language well.

Okay, so I’m going to end my first journal entry with “the words” that I’m supposed to repeat out loud. Then, I’ve got to hit the sack. Tomorrow’s a workday at the Broadway. And they like their employees bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. So here goes, it’s no big deal – I WAS RAPED. IT WASN’T MY FAULT. I’M STILL A GOOD PERSON. – Good night.

December 15th:

Dear Diary… No, skip that. Saying “Dear Diary” feels like just another way of my making a parody out of something in an attempt to make it less real. I’ve got to try and stop being so sarcastic. And my sarcasm annoys people who don’t understand my true intentions. I’m really a very nice person. But I grew up in a sarcastic family that attracts other sarcastic people as our friends.

Anyway, my therapist told me today that I shouldn’t expect people to be “mind-readers” and know what’s really going on inside of me. Oh, never mind. I’ve just started keeping a journal and already I’ve skipped three days. Not really much of a diary, I guess. And probably not very responsible of me, either.
I realized, after re-reading my last, first, and only journal entry that I didn’t formally introduce myself to my non-existent audience here on these blank pages. Not very proper of me. Not the way Mama has trained me. So, my full name, and I guess it’s a mouthful, is Ramona Elena Maria Batista. I’ll be nineteen years old, next Wednesday on the 22, the same day as the winter solstice.

I’m taller than most of my friends, 5’8” at last count, and weigh around 120 pounds, depending on my “time of the month.” I was always kind of tall and scrawny and geeked out when I was growing up. I think older guys are the ones most attracted to me. Maybe because I’m not taller than them anymore.

I’d like to have a narrower waist to give me more of a voluptuous appearance. Mama says I have a great figure and the proof is that “the guys are always lining up at my door,” which I guess is something of an exaggeration, The thing I like about me best is I have really manageable hair. This saves me tons of time getting ready for work or school or parties or whatever.

For just under a year, I’ve also been living on my own in a studio apartment the size of a shoebox. It’s in a great area, though, on Beverly Glen in Westwood. I moved out of my mother’s house because we lived too far from where I work in Century City. Now I can take my 10-speed to the Broadway. I still commute, though, three times a week to Valley State College in Northridge, where I’m majoring in Psychology.

Mama feels like I’d been her best friend and that now I’ve betrayed her by moving away. I don’t understand how she thinks I can be her friend and her little girl. I tell her she’s got enough with Gabby. But I know I’ve always been Mama’s favorite.
And boy is she dramatic. All of us kids have inherited this from her. Rosalia, her next door neighbor, confessed to me that Mama has been saying, “Que lástima, mi hija buena ella rompa nuestra amistad. - What a pity, my good daughter has torn apart our friendship.”

Mama says that this is history’s way of repeating itself. She says that my leaving her is her punishment for her leaving her own mother alone in Ciudad Juarez. She says that it’s just like that thing about the sins of the fathers being washed on the souls of the children, only in reverse.

But this is nineteen years after Juarez, and it sounds a little beyond mere drama to me. It sounds like melodrama, and I tell