Incidents From a Shelter: The Season of the Larva

Chynna Maryanne dresses in pale blue all the time. In windy fabrics that move like tissue in winter; after showers, while she is still wet, she dresses herself in light powder blue. The color clings to her dark skin and reflects off her tiny Spanish face, softening the years. She talks about her baby girl, the one who went to live with her mother while she was living in Cuba. Chynna Maryanne wants soap and towels and she talks about the soul of her baby back on the isle bonita Cuba. "My baby is beautiful and my mommie has her, so soon I go home and spend time with my baby."

Chynna Maryanne says she has dreams of flying babies. That she reaches out in the dark, crowded dorm when the babies start to come. Sometimes, as many as twelve babies float by her, suspending themselves, barely, and then they seem to drop slowly like helium balloons. She reaches for one, hoping that she can grab onto an ankle or a hand, but then they disappear.

Her beautiful baby is now seven years old, but Chynna Maryanne has not seen her for that long and therefore cannot imagine her any way other than as a baby. "It was on a boat that I escaped and it was unbelievable because it was raining and the waves were very high. I believed that my baby would come with her father, but her father was killed and so now my life is with no one. It is not the way I planned it to be. I hope that soon I can see my girl."

Chynna Maryanne tells the story the way she wants it to be known, but there is another reality. She won the lottery that Cuba has for its citizens to leave the country, and she decided to take it. She made a choice to get out of Cuba and to leave her daughter behind. The baby’s father abandoned both of them years ago when he left on a boat to the United States. Today she is asking for more toothpaste and a new toothbrush. She wears them out because she brushes her teeth all the time. She covers her wet hair in a blue scarf to match the dresses in the same color. Her dark skin glows with pink. She hardly looks old enough to have a baby and yet she is forty-six years old. She shines with virginity. Coquetishly, she talks with the maintenance men who understand her Spanish. They are sympathetic toward her, but behind her back they think that she was wrong to have left her baby behind. What kind of life could be lived without the child that she bore, they wonder aloud when she is not around to hear them. She tries to get their sympathy and kindness, this helps her to feel better about what she has done. In the daytime, when she can no longer depend on the dreams that make it possible for her to hold her girl, she cleans and scrubs away little reminders that are on her skin. The pain distracts her from her thoughts for awhile.

The social workers want Chynna Maryanne to visit alternative housing and to start to plan on moving out. She has been living in this shelter for five years. She has tremendous fear that if she leaves her family will never be able to find her. So she slips away when her social worker is looking for her and hides in corners of the great armory. She eats her meals in the staircases, sometimes sharing them with Theresa Mills. They struggle to understand each other’s language, yet understand each other perfectly well. In pointed moments of protection, they hide the knowledge of each other’s whereabouts. Standing alone for years and years, fighting off the unknown, they collude like astral comets every now and again and stand up for each other.