Mateo Pardo

Mateo Pardo, a native of New York City, grew up in Ybor City and West Tampa, the Latin neighborhoods of Tampa, Florida. He attended the University of South Florida and Columbia University before receiving his Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He taught French, Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas and Stockton State College. He has been a social worker, has worked for the Florida Legislature and is currently self-employed. He has written two novels and some poetry. He is currently at work on a third novel.

Orisha Ochun:

Prologue

Chapter 4

Poems:

Once Upon a Time

Phoenicians

Conquistador

God in the City

With Grandfather at the Ice Factory

Prologue

            “Ori!”
            She opened her eyes and sat up with a start.
            “Ooorrriiii…!”
            She had fallen asleep on the big sofa in the living room. She had fallen asleep waiting for Ignacio, and had dreamed she was flying over a city of massive stone bell towers, orange rooftops and white walls held together by an immense spider web, a city ringed by green mountains crawling with fire ants, horned beetles, and cucarachas, mountains wrapped in mist, humming with cicadas, swarming with locusts.
            And the bells were tolling.
            “Bambo. Bambe. Bambo. Bambe.”
            And the people gathered at their windows, on balconies, street corners, and plazas, looking up, pointing at her, and crossing themselves.
            “Upa, Ori!”
            But she did not want to get up. She lay down again, closed her eyes, curled up and listened.
            “Upa, Ori! Upa, mi negra! Ya es hora!”
            She opened her eyes again. The room was bathed in the glow of the streetlight on the far corner. She looked up at the plaster Santa Barbara on the mantelpiece. The saint wore a necklace of red and white glass beads. Ignacio would not have approved.
            The saint looked down at her.
            “Ay Ori, como tengo sed!”
            Where was Ignacio? Why wasn’t he back?
            She got up and took a glass off the mantelpiece. It was empty. She took it to the kitchen, her bare feet gliding over the painted floor, and filled it with tap water. A breeze brushed against her shoulders. There was a distant flash of lightening. The sky rumbled. She shivered. A dark cloud crept towards the moon. A mist hung above the banana tree. A big spider was weaving a spiral web between the banana tree and the avocado tree with golden thread. A snake slithered through the weeds. A fruit rat scurried across the roof. The pulsating chorus of crickets rose and fell. She turned and took the glass back to the living room, placing it carefully between the saint and the brass urn containing Ignacio’s parents’ ashes.
            “Ay Ori! Ay Ochun, ponte tu camisa blanca y el collar de abalorios blancos y amarillos.”
            So she took off her orange sweatpants and her red t-shirt, stepped to the window and watched the mist envelope the azalea bushes, the palm tree and the mango tree in the front yard. A cloud of moths swirled around the street light. A bat swept by. She took her white nightgown from the overnight bag at the foot of the sofa and slipped into it. She took out her long necklace, the one with white, glass beads and yellow, glass beads, wrapped it around her neck, and took a deep breath. The air was bittersweet.
            “Ensiende la bela que el muetto entro!”
            She took a match from the sideboard and lit the candle on the mantelpiece.
            And so it was that she began to dance the candombe to the beat of the drum that was her heart, a white shadow brushing against dark shadows, her eyes like fireflies, whispering and flickering, her feet tracing a pattern on the painted pine floor, her hands unraveling the things that lay about her.
            “Obatala! Yamba O!”
            So it was that mango-nanga and banana-nanga awoke, reached out, touched her and blew their sweetness into her mouth. So it was that Arana Nephila, hungry and afraid, dangling from her web, prayed that the dark cloud would not cover the moon. And Maja slithered up the avocado tree and onto the roof.
            “Cucha el maja!”
            A flash of lightening lit up the room. Chango, no longer a saint, a necklace of red and white glass beads around his neck, clapped his hands, jumped down (tan macho que era) from the mantelpiece, took her in his rough arms, and ground his hips into hers, filling the room with an odor of wet smoke, rum and laughter.
           “Sangala, Ochun! Bembe…be..be!”
            His legs spread wide, he moved like a crab, like the devil himself.
            “Sangala, hembra.”
            She wrapped herself around him, silky as a tobacco leaf.
            “Que tengo el Chango!”
            “Paca, paca, paca, paca, pam, pam, pam.”
            She wrapped herself around the street, the trees, the house, filling the room with the smell of moldy things moving in dark places under the house.
            “Piquitipiquitipan, piquitiquitipan.”
            She heard tires rolling heavily over the pavement, grinding dirt. A motor turned fitfully, stopped with a thump. Doors opened and closed. Somebody coming up the steps. Somebody walking across the porch. Somebody tapping on the screen door, calling her.
            “Ori, Ori, abrame la puerta! Dejame entrar!”
            She ran to the door to see who it was. He was big. So big he blocked out the streetlight and the mango tree. It was too dark to make out his face.
            “E’ta Ignacio?”
            His voice was gutteral, hoarse, bitter. He smelled of cheap cigars and brandy. She knew him. She knew where he came from and what he wanted.
            “No.”
            “Cuando ba llegar?”
            “No se.”
            “Abreme la puerta, parda.”
            She stepped back, shaking her head, trembling, holding herself tightly, hands clasping arms, poised to run. But where? Somebody was struggling with the back door. Somebody was opening the bedroom window.
            “Como quieres. A mi, me da lo mi’mo.”
            Somebody ripped the back screen door open with a knife and reached for the hook.
            “Cuidao, Felo!
            “No!”
            “Hoy toca ti, pringosa, manana toca mi.”
            She heard the man at the back door jump off the steps and hit the ground. The man at the front door moved. She turned to run, but the flash blinded her, and sent her flying back into a white pit where the only sound was the sound of the mayombero’s voice, whispering mayombe bombe, mayombe bombe, mayombe bombe candombe, over and over again until she forgot all about the man at the door, the flash that lit up the world and the roar that pursued her.
            “Apaga la bela, que’l muetto se ba!”

Chapter 4

Nobody was surprised when the news got around that someone had blown off Orisha ’s face with a shotgun in Ignacio Mulligan’s house. We had all known it would come to something like that. Dean Toansing told him, flat out, that he was suspended and that his contract would not be renewed.

“You’ve gone too far this time,” she said.

And, as though that weren’t bad enough, the Ft. Desoto Tribune had printed photos of him and Orisha side by side over an article recounting her disreputable past, his offbeat reputation, the bloody details of the murder, and not a little speculation about the nature of their relationship. He was as much in the news as the forest fire (which was creeping closer to town by the day). Harry Miller told him not to say anything to the press, no matter what. Ignacio knew the drill. So every time a Barbie or Ken look-alike approached him with a camera, a tape recorder or a notepad, he told them where to stick it.

The national media picked up on the case, too, and it acquired a moniker; it became the Beauty and the Beast Case and some reporters referred to him as Quasimodo and Orisha as Orisharalda. But the killer was that they always said Ignacio was a Ft. Desoto State College professor and that Ft. Desoto was surrounded by a ring of fire. In fact, Ft. Desoto State became synonymous with strippers, murder, foul-mouthed, atheistic, hippy, sexual predator professors and a forest fire that wouldn’t go away.

The cops didn't have a clue. The Ft. Desoto PD became the butt of jokes on late night TV. But what were they going to do? The neighbors hadn’t seen a thing. Detective Valenti would have been glad to pin it all on Ignacio, but his alibi checked out, and furthermore, Ignacio had no history of violence. And no history of preying on his students. CSI wasn’t able to come up with anything either, other than that Orisha had been drinking a lot that night and that the killer had used a standard model shotgun with a sawed off barrel. Suspicion naturally fell on the grieving widower and his children, but nothing physical linked them to the crime and they all had excellent alibis. That’s how things stood when Ignacio got an invitation to come out to the Tamiami Fruit Company plant. Mr. Mango wanted to talk.

The plant was located off of U.S. 41, 50 miles southeast of Ft. Desoto, a long way off from the fire, in the middle of an immense field of mango trees. It looked like a prison. It was surrounded by a chainlink fence with barbed wire running along the top and flood light lamps. The guard at the front gate was armed with an automatic pistol. He kept Ignacio waiting for a long time while he talked with different people in the plant. He made Ignacio pull over to the side of the road. It was one of those hot, dry summer days that were becoming the norm down here. The mango trees were doing fine. Everything in Cigartown and the rest of Ft. Desoto was drying up (that one hard shower hadn’t lasted long enough to do us any good), but down here there were no water restrictions. The sprinklers were going full blast in the middle of the day.

Eventually Ignacio fell asleep. The guard woke him up and told him where to park. Ignacio got a kick out of parking his rusty’94 Mercury Sable (the only car he felt comfortable driving) between an Audi 8 and a BMW in front of the sleek, glass walls of the main building. There were three flags flapping on the flagpoles out front: the Cuban flag (which Ignacio was always confusing with the Puerto Rican flag, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t Puerto Rican), Old Glory and the Tamiami Fruit Company flag (which sported a red and orange mango set against a white background). And there was more security at the front door. And more phone calls. Finally one of the guards blindfolded Ignacio and led him to an elevator and then through a long tunnel.

“I wan you find out who kill my wife,” Mr. Mango told him.

They were sitting in an underground bunker lit by florescent bulbs. Outside several husky men in guayaberas stood guard. There was a big map of Cuba on one wall, and a row of TV monitors on another, each of which showed a different shot of the plant and its grounds. Mr. Mango sat behind a big, glass desk. He looked like a prune on life support. He was attached to an oxygen tank and a pretty girl in a tight, white uniform that left very little to the imagination, hovered over him as he spoke.

“Why me?” Ignacio asked, feeling like he’d been invited backstage during the performance of a Mexican soap opera. (He loved Mexican soap operas.)

“Because you know what made her tick,” Mr. Mango said, sucking on an unlit Cuban cigar, regretting that his addiction to oxygen had made smoking dangerous.

“You think so?” Ignacio asked, impressed by the cigar. It was a Romeo y Julieta corona. He could tell by the gold and black band. And he was wondering where Mr. Mango got his.

“I know so. She told me all about you.”

Advanced age had brought with it a new twist on Mr. Mango’s take on life. He still burned to own beautiful things and was still willing to do almost anything to get them, but now, once he had acquired them and broken them in, he was given to putting them away in safe places instead of using them until they broke. For instance, he collected antique cars but rarely drove one after he had given it a test drive. He stored them in garages in various places. He owned ranch complete with thoroughbred horses, but rarely went there or to the track. He’d never ridden a horse in his life, and he wasn’t a gambling man. And he didn’t mind if, from time to time, someone else drove one of his cars or rode one of his horses. After all, cars were meant to be driven and horses, too. What mattered and what gave him so much pleasure now was the secure knowledge that he owned those cars, those horses or that woman.

“A lot of people think it was you.”

“Lo se, hijo. Por eso I gotta find out who it was. Its hurting my business. La gente no quiere comprar juice from someone wha kill they wife.”

“And a lot of people think it was your kids.”

“I don sink so.”

“What do you think?”

“I sink it wa Castro.
“Castro?”

“Yeah. Ese hijo de puta couln’t stan me havin Orisha . He wan

her for hinsef. No woman in Cuba safe from hin. But she got away. And he kill her to stop me from havin her.”

“What has he got against you?”

“Wha you mean, wha has he got against me? Wha he got against me es que sabe que when he’s dead, I’m goin back to Cuba an I’m goin to be the president there. And Cuba’s gonna be free. He can’ stan’ tha’.”

ONCE UPON A TIME

Once upon a time is running out on me

Somewhere dangling on the edge

Please come home is where the heart is bleeding

On the ground flowers bloom at night

I miss the mark sit down sing wordless

Hopelessly blessed generations thunder by overhead

Spontaneous crawling timeless truths escape

The dark side of my face turns towards you

Once upon a time is running out on me

Afoot in a black forest on a moonless night

Before the lights go on and on and on

I walk over the graves of those whose

Growled curses beneath the bushes pursue me

I run breathless through fields of fire

I approach the silver towers and stand

Transfixed with fright and awe and beauty

Once upon a time is running out on me

Stretched at the feet of the most beautiful

The most cunning the most harmonious the most

Wholly abjectly begging for mercies unexpected

A guest of winsome wiles who paces the floor

And insults his fortunate hostess

And in the movement of an eyelash forgotten

On the pillow tossed upon the bed

Once upon a time is running out on me

I pace the room I lock the door

I listen for the sound of footsteps in the corridor

I wheel and turn and draw a breath

What monster lurks within without

Would brave the gentle night of death

Would cry would sing would shout

I listen for the sound of footsteps in the corridor

PHOENICIANS

Rimbaud speaks in tongues as the cat stalks us in the mews.

Phoenician sailors hail the sail-stretching red dawn.

At nightfall they dock in Gades at Hercules’ cloven feet.

The Pharaoh’s emissary had not hoped for so much.

They had seen the tin islands and danced among the megaliths.

In a rough mountain town a bag of bones dreams of gun-running,

Plaster saints, vanity mirrors to wile away Abyssinian evenings,

A peaceful farmhouse, a dutiful wife, an engineer son,

A bitter, wasted youth. Harrar, Mother Africa, tall, graceful,

Waiting for a bus on Brixton Hill Road, gray sky, the din

Of rush hour all about me, I saw myself and you limping

Across a barren plain towards a range of purple mountains,

So far away they looked like low hanging clouds.

I fumbled for my ticket, climbed the spiral staircase,

Sat down and held out my hand to the conductor.

You wept tears of joy, thinking we were home at last.

And perhaps we were. Who am I to say? I who worship

The deified Alexander, whose bones lucky Ptolemy enshrined

In his great city by the sea at the crossroads of the known world.

I dream of Byblos, Tyre, Carthage, Antioch, Seleucia. I sleep

In the gardens of Palmyra. Zenobia yearns for my caresses.

I sally forth with my mounted archers and scour the earth

The Persian host scatters before me like a flock of geese.

The Senate and the People of Rome cower at my approach.

A purple robe, golden sandals, the soothing lyre. Hadrian

Walks through the gardens of Tivoli dreaming of Antinous,

That beautiful boy who dwells in the Nile with crocodiles.

Our dark ship hits the heaving wind at dawn.

The helmsman grips the tiller and sets his course.

The Goddess lifts her veil and reveals herself.

Our sails billow with waves of harsh sea salt.

We are the howling children of the Holy Land.

By dusk we shall have passed the Pillars.

By starlight we shall carouse in Cartagena.

We go where the Hellenes dare not go.

We bear wine, pottery, jewels, linens.

We live in cities by the mountainous sea.

We are the wanderers of the earth.

CONQUISTADOR

Cristobal , Hernan, Lope, Francisco, Diego, Aguirre.

Your blood runs down my street in the mourning hour.

That iron cross you planted in my heart has taken root,

Rough rust mingles Quetzalcoatl’s and Tupac Amaru’s sap,

Caupolican’s sinews, and Cuauhtemoc’s holy bones.

Your sword cut the infidel down. The dead worship you.

Squalid cities spring out of the mud of their multitude,

Tenochtitlan, rises above the smog, shimmering,

Gilded with dreams of turgid swamps, black rivers,

Monstrous beasts, feathered warriors and room after

Ingot laden room beyond all measure.

Carlos Quinto, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire,

Defender of the Faith, King of all the Spains, rejoices

At the mere mention of you far away in hot pursuit

Of Emiliano, Jose, Che, Fidel, Simon, and Pancho,

Your half-breed children, living on what comes their way,

A wayward, willful, brooding pack of hungry lies you say,

Nipping at your heels, Chibcha maidens sing your praises.

You row up the wide Magdalena in search of the Golden One.

Boabdil weeps as he paces the walls of Casablanca,

And dwells upon the gardens and fountains of El Alhambra,

The olive trees of Jaen, the snows of mighty Mulhacen,

The breached walls and the smoldering ruins of El Alhama,

The Catholic boot pressing down upon his Moslem neck,

Eight hundred glorious years condemned to die in exile.

Moctezuma smiles, opens his arms, and hugs the White God.

The Inca moans and grinds his forehead into the ground.

There is laughter in the gilded counting houses of Genoa.

Percival’s corpse rattles feebly and crumbles into dust.

The Fisher King sucks in his last, despairing breath.

Bedazzled virgins throw themselves from the battlements.

For you have found the Round Table and the Grail.

And sent them hurtling back across the Ocean Sea.

GOD IN THE CITY

I’m looking for God in the City,

A storefront, street corner kind of god.

Who hesitates,

Confused by the noise and the traffic,

Entangled by a proliferation of wires.

A black god, a brown god, a white god,

Or perhaps a little yellow plastic goddess

Making lewd gestures at passing drivers,

Sleeping it off curled up in a bed of garbage,

Surrounded by her otherworldly possessions.

Our Lady of the Fleas, Mistress of the Roaches,

Having tossed out the covenant, pawned the ark,

Sold her pint of diseased blood and eaten the host,

Abandoned by her son, tormented by the ghost,

A doublecrossing virgin, big with child,

Basking in the incandescence of our headlights,

Incorporeal, impalpable, insatiable, and wild,

Raising her arms above the teeming chimney tops,

Choking angels with black, brown, white smoke,

Speaking to us in the blaring, screeching sirens,

Composing a chorale of honking horns,

Roaring though the underworld to Hoboken,

Jersey City, Hackensack, and Ho-Ho-Kus,

Unsettling the sacred order of the universe.

The faithful dead gather to adore her

As she rises panting from the East River,

Skin glistening, nostrils flaring, breasts heaving,

Aphrodite of the homeless, our morning star.

With Grandfather at the Ice Factory

“Are you a ballplayer, too?” the iceman asks,

Grasping me with two strong hands,

Hoisting me up,

Examining me carefully,

Smiling broadly as he speaks.

“Looks like his uncle,” he says,

Placing me back on the floor.

“How is Felix, anyway? Haven’t seen him in years.”

“Still playing ball up north?”

“Still try to make the big leagues? Is he married?”

“An American girl! I thought a Latin girl would get him.”

“A little girl of his own!”

“Working in a mattress factory?”

“Best outfielder I ever saw!”

“I played ball with him, remember? I caught.”

He has a catcher’s body, this iceman. Squat,

Like Yogi or Roy Campanella.

Not like Al Lopez, who came from here

And caught for the Dodgers and the Indians.

“The sweetest swing I ever saw.”

“The manager of the Reds told him to beef up.”

“You can’t play with the big boys weighing 120.”

Grandfather stares at the ground.

I am all eyes and ears.

The iceman is chopping with an ice pick,

Making two blocks of ice for Grandmother’s icebox.

He is big and hairy.

His shoulders, thick and sloping.

He speaks so rapidly I can barely understand him.

“How is Juanita? I heard about her father.”

“They say he was crossing Seventh Avenue.”

“On his way to the Cuban Club.”

“You know how he loved to play dominos.”

“He died in the street like a dog.”

“It’s not right. It’s just not right.”

“He was eighty-five.”

“Worked in the cigar factories his whole life.”

The iceman shakes his head,

Wraps a block in newspaper.

Grandfather calls him Sindo.

His name is Gumersindo.

An old-fashioned country name from Spain.

Grandfather is from there.

My uncles have names like that.

Felix, Aquilino, Aurelio, Horacio, Saturnino.

Roman names.

Roman noses.

Manly men,

Who smell of cognac,

Who blow cigar smoke in your face,

Making a man out of you,

Laughing as you gasp for air.

Firemen, policemen, TV repairmen, factory workers.

Real men.

Men who play with fire.

Men who don’t fuck around.

Men who like women,

Strong women.

Women who talk back.

Sindo picks up the blocks with big pincers.

One dangling from each meaty arm,

He carries them to Grandfather’s black Ford,

Grandfather takes my hand in his.

He is retired now.

Once he was a foreman.

He has many friends.

He is an important man.

He has learned to choose his words carefully,

He is an orphan. He never went to school.

He cannot read or write.

He never lets me win at cards.

Grandfather fishes two cigars out of his shirt pocket,

Gives one to Sindo and sniffs the other.

His eyelids flutter as he inhales its odor.

The smell of dirt and sunshine.

Cuban dirt and Cuban sunshine.

This is serious business.

Each man licks his cigar slowly,

Lights up, rolls the smoke about in his mouth,

Heavy, yellow smoke that curls around their lips,

Smoke that has to be pushed up into the sky

Above Grandfather’s black Ford,

Above the palm trees, the azaleas, the live oaks,

Above the redbrick church across the street,

Above the telephone poles and dangling wires,

Above a yellow streetcar clanging to a stop.

Above the factory’s sloping, corrugated tin roof,

Into a sky full of dark, rumbling clouds.