Mine are blue… ¿y que?
In San Jose, there’s The Roller Skating Guy.
In Santa Cruz, there’s The Cranky Lady with the Pink Dreads.
In Missoula, there’s The Guy Who Parks His Huge, Smelly Dogs Outside of Coffee Shops All Over Town.
And in the Campestre neighborhood of Pachuca, Hidalgo, there is, apparently…me. The Girl with the Pretty Eyes. Blush, blush.
I learned of my fame like this: I got into a taxi on a relatively obscure street downtown, and the driver immediately said,You’re going to Campestre, right?
I said, Um…right…, but I thought, creeee-py!
I’d seen you before, he told me in such a friendly way the creepiness was immediately dispelled. You walk a lot! I see you sometimes walking on the avenue in Campestre. And I saw you at the butcher one time, and I thought, ‘there goes the girl with the pretty eyes.’
I blushed and said something like “gleeerp…?”
He went on —And then I asked my compadre who lives over there, ‘you know the girl with the pretty eyes?’ And he said, ‘oh, yeah, she has pretty eyes, she lives on X Street, I see her around.’ And then I saw you today and I thought, ‘looks like the girl with the pretty eyes needs a taxi!’
I blushed some more and responded, approximately, “graaallf”
For the next several blocks he told me of his master plan to jump-start the American economy, while I nodded and murmured meaningless politenesses, not wishing to alert him to the fact that his plan was utterly incomprehensible. Just before he dropped me at my corner, he mentioned that his previous fare had been an illegal Guatemalan immigrant on his way to meet a coyote and be smuggled to the “other side.”
So, I’m The Girl with the Pretty Eyes. I’m not particularly comfortable with this, to start with because my eyes aren’t even all that pretty. My brother, now, his eyes are pretty, pure sky blue, knocking the ladies dead since 1984. Or our niece Montserrat’s enormous, sparkling black eyes. Mine—pshaw, just plain old bluey-gray eyes. Seein’ eyes.
But mostly, I’m uncomfortable with it because The Girl with the Pretty Eyes is just a euphemism for the The Girl Whose Eyes Are Considered Pretty Because They Aren’t Brown, which is a euphemism for The Girl Who’s Considered Pretty Because She’s White. And I know that if I’m going to live out my life in Mexico, I have to get used to that, but I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with it.
This morning I was teaching a class on possessive pronouns. We were comparing our different possessions: I’d say, “My pen is blue,” and the students would respond, “Mine is black,” “Mine is purple,” and so on. For one cue, I said, “My eyes are blue.” Adriana said, “Uuuuy, que presumida, teacher!”-What a showoff! Adriana and I go back to Level 1 and I knew she was just joking. But after Jesi and Lucia had both offered “Mine are brown,” Juan, who’s a showoff if there ever was one, said, ”MINE are GRAY!” with as much pride as though he’d said, “MINE won the Nobel PEACE Prize!” I thought, “Yeah, but that doesn’t keep you from sucking at English, asshole,” though of course I smiled a teacher smile and nodded, yes, that’s correct.
Anyway, I know that taxi driver meant to pay me a compliment. It was very sweet, really. Maybe I should leave it at that.
I just keep wondering how that Guatemalan guy is doing. We shared a taxi in space, if not in time—a tenuous bond, to be sure, but I think of him. I think this: Soon my blue eyes and I–with all our pretty legal paperwork–will be moving south, closer to where he came from. He and his brown eyes are heading north, taking an incredible risk, to get to where I came from.
But that day, we were both right here.
5 responses to Mine are blue… ¿y que?
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Julie Schwietert Collazo said on January 31, 2009
Exactly. And race is a huge issue in Latin America, make no mistake about it.
Teresa Ponikvar said on January 30, 2009
The seductiveness of the exotic and the question of class are certainly a big part of this. But when one of Ibis’s cousins grabs her daughter’s arm and scolds, “God, you need to stay out of the sun, look at your skin, you’re BLACK,” and then holds her arm next to mine to emphasize the horrible “blackness”–well, I don’t really care if we’re talking about race or class or a little of both. It’s not cool.
janetfactor said on January 27, 2009
I had to laugh at the beginning: in Ithaca, there was the bike-riding transvestite.
I wouldn’t read too much racism into the appeal of blond hair and blue eyes in Mexico. Remember, what is valuable is what is rare. And deep in our DNA lies the urge to outbreed for hardier offspring. So the exotic is always sexy, be it paler or darker than ourselves. Different will do. Personally I’ve never been attracted to a guy with blue eyes, likely because all my siblings and my mother had them. For me they are a turn-off.
And the preference for light skin is a reflection of realities of class: it is the poor who work outdoors for long hours and burn their skin dark. To be pale is to advertise that you needn’t do manual labor; you are rich. Everybody prefers prosperity. This preference, as you have discovered, is not unique to European societies. Go to India and you will discover that the lower castes are darker in skin tone, and upper caste women obsess over staying fair.
I am not, of course, claiming that racism doesn’t exist, but it is not the only explanation for such things.
Tim Patterson said on January 25, 2009
Beautiful, haunting. I loved the ending.
Julie Schwietert Collazo said on January 23, 2009
This gave me chills. I just want to print all your writing, put it between two covers, and pull it out for a read anytime I need to remember what’s real and important.
I have my own “blue”– I am “la rubia” in Francisco’s family– “the blonde.” Though the guy who cuts my hair keeps trying to convince me to dye my hair– “You have too many tones,” he says–whatever the hell that means–I am 100% blonde in Cuba. And Francisco’s mother frequently says, “I’m so glad you married him. Maybe we’ll get some lighter skinned people in this family.” When she first saw him after 28 years, she looked at him and said, “Is this ugly black monkey my child? He’s sooo black.” It’s beyond uncomfortable, for all the reasons you articulated.