Ana Dreamt

Ana dreamed easily. In class, her sign-language interpreter signed the lecture of the teacher, but too often Ana would drift out to another world. The people of Luza spoke a language of light, geometry and vibration. Pulsating polyhedrons spun from the agape mouth of the speaker. They vibrated the very quiet, but beautiful crystalline realm at a gentle frequency. As such, the native language made it very difficult to convey secrets and nearly impossible to lie. Truth had resonated through the air and land so consistently, and wisdom was so common that any insincere proclamation was immediately identified. Such a strong ringing of truth ensured that there was little disagreement among the people. Violence was staunchly avoided for fear that such a harsh vibration would crack or even shatter their glimmering world. Though quite foreign from the world where she came from, Luza made sense to Ana. She even had a friend there, who she thought of like and aunt and even called her, “Tía,” Spanish for aunt. In Luza, this translated as oval that seemed to wobble, alternating its long axis from up and down, to side to side while light blue and green swirled within the form. Her tía had taught her all about life in Luza and always welcomed Ana’s visits. Ana also sought guidance from her tía about life on Earth. She was very depressed by the confines of being deaf in her mundane life, but she was always assured that she had a purpose there. Yet, no matter how much Ana begged, her guide would not reveal it with any exactness. “You must discover that for yourself,” she would explain with soft-edged triangles of green and pink that fluttered like butterflies.
As everyone stirred at the end of class, Ana was pulled back to the dead silence of her reality. She shook off her daze and gathered her books to leave. As always, her sign-language interpreter followed closely. Ana loathed the woman that hardly ever left her side. Even at lunch, she was not far off, sitting with the teachers. Ana sat alone. She watched her peers talk and laugh. The cafeteria was so loud that Ana could fell the voices rattling the nerves endings in her skin, but she could not hear a word. This reality saddened her, so after eating she would open up her notebook to draw. Her sketches were quite intricate with layering patterns that magically portrayed three dimensions that seemed to pop off of the page. Even so, her artistic abilities were overlooked for her special needs.
After school, Ana walked from the high school to the taquería and tienda that her parents owned. Immigrants from Veracruz, Mexico, they hardly spoke a word of English. Their knowledge of the American Standard Sign Language that and was being taught to Ana was limited. They exercised a more crude and spontaneous communication, yet Ana could understand them perfectly. As a result Ana’s own learning suffered. She understood the sign-language that she had been vigorously taught, but mostly ignored English itself, making it hard to read lips or books. Nor was she very literate in Spanish, since her parents were often occupied supporting the family and had little time to teach her. At the taquería, Ana would help her family after school. She often made tortillas, washed dishes or helped to clean up. When she arrive her father greeted her warmly. To not make her feel normal, Pedro always talked to Ana as if she was. Ana sensed this and appreciated her considerate father. She knew that he cared for her even when she had know idea what he was saying to her. Conversely, people who knew the family often viewed this behavior as denial, and considered him a distant person. Ana went to the kitchen where her mother and older sister were still serving tacos and cleaning after a busy lunch. Her sister Marisol smiled at her, as she put on an apron and hairnet. Just out of high school, Marisol was already pregnant. Ana was baffled by the changes she saw in her sisters body. Though she had seen plenty of babies, the finer points of pregnancy had never been explained to her. Ana had witnessed her bouts of morning sickness and felt something was wrong with her sister, even though she seemed fine most of the time. Her mother, Juanita, was busy serving a some mid afternoon customers, but Ana knew what needed to be done. She washed her hands and plowed them down into the Masa and water mixture. Pulling out a blob of dough, she rolled it into a globe and the mashed them down in the tortilla press. She truly enjoyed the process. As she made tortillas, she would often remember her recent dreams. She was almost as blissful as when she dreamed.
The feeling of gazing eyes interrupted Ana’s daydream. She looked up from her work to meet the eyes of a young man in line that was smiling at her. She returned the smile briefly, and shyly looked down again. Lately many men had been watching her, but Ana did not know why. She glanced up again and saw the young man was still watching her. She felt a rare sense of pride, and was a bit sad when he left. Ana remember the young man later that evening. She imagined him and her as friends, communing and sharing joy with him as she did with her tía in Luza. Then, when she fell asleep she drifted there. She saw the gentle luminescent beings walking the streets. In the in the center of a park she saw her tía. “Tía!” she exclaimed, followed by an excited jumble of shapes that spun wildly into the air, attracting the attention of others who passed by. She told her tía about the potential friend. Ana was disappointed by the solemn response of her friend. A red pyramid warned Ana, “Understand that not everyone of Earth has the good intentions you do.” The very next day, as she walked from school. The smiling man pulled his yellow Chevy low-rider into the drive just ahead of Ana. She was surprised to see the familiar grinning face. As she came up to the car, he invited her in with a beckoning pat on the passenger seat. Ana might have jumped right in if it had not been for the warning she had received the night before. She noticed how the man hardly looked into her eyes but gazed along her blossoming body. Ana suddenly felt a sense of danger without understanding exactly why. She backed away and walked past the car. The man pulled back out and followed along side motioning for her attention. Ana glanced at him. His smile was fading and did not convey the warmth it had before. He finally sped away and she continued briskly to the store.
There, a second surprise awaited Ana. Her older brother Gonzalo was at work stocking the shelves with the shipment that had arrived that morning. She had not seen him in a long time. Before that, only every few days, had he come home to shower and have a homemade meal. He would watch some television and lift some weights, and then after a day or two disappear again. When he had finally disappeared for much longer, her parents did not know how to explain drug-charges or prison to Ana. If they had known how she felt inside, it might not have seemed so unlikely that she could have understood. The mystery no longer mattered to Ana. She ran to hug her older brother. Even though they could hardly communicate, they shared a special sibling bond that would carry on until one day after Pedro had died, and cause Gonzalo to take up the responsibility to help run the family business and support Ana.
In the kitchen, a pile of dishes awaited Ana. Ana’s mother was busy as usual. Many times she seemed to hardly acknowledge Ana. Juanita felt like she was somehow to blame for Ana’ impairment. As she felt herself aging, she worried for her children, especially Ana’s future. Looking up from the grill, she witnessed Ana so deeply dazed that she was putting up dishes to dry that were not even clean. Panicked, Juanita rushed over to shake her. Ana did not understand why her mother tried to prevent her dreaming, the main means of joy she had. She furrowed her brow at her mother that had startled her. She had no way of knowing about her mother’s twin sister. Juanita, since a young age, had always been out going and industrious, her twin, like Ana, had been a dreamer. Sometimes, she had stopped in mid step and fallen into trances. When they were alone, her sister would tell her of the strange worlds filled with unusual beings that she had visited. The idea terrified Juanita, and so she told her parents, who were deeply concerned. They thought that some brujería, or witch’s spell, common to that area in Mexico, had cursed the sister. The whole family made every effort to prevent her from having such dreams or telling such stories. Then, one day while playing a hiding game outside, the sister had simply disappeared. After an hour of searching on her own, Juanita had had to tell her parent that her sister was lost. That memory of her sister, whom she never saw again, haunted Juanita so much that after her parents died, she no longer wanted to live in Veracruz. Pregnant with Gonzalo, she convinced her husband, Pedro, that they should move to the United States and start a new life. Now she struggled to keep from losing her son to the streets, her daughter to the dreams and maintain an income for the family that would soon have a new member.
Ana scrubbed sinks and counters after the store was closed. She helped to sweep and then carry out the trash. She grabbed a stack of cardboard from the shipment and carried it outside. The air was warm and still sticky from the humidity of the day. As Ana reached up to deposit the cardboard into the slot of the dumpster she was suddenly surrounded by two strong arms, one that covered her mouth. Her light body was lifted up and carried, and she could not see the face where a grin had turned to grimace as the kidnapper tried to maintain control of the kicking body. Gonzalo came out the back door with two big bags of trash, but quickly dropped them to rush after his sister. He knew the the scoundrel and his yellow Chevy from his dealings in the street. The man knew him aswell. He quickly released Ana to run from the much larger Gonzalo. The perpetrator dived into his car, but Gonzalo grabbed hold of the open window frame. The fleeing man quickly cranked the car and threw it into reverse before Gonzalo could reach him, but Gonzalo held tight and the shiny yellow door, that had been waxed with such pride, snapped off of the roaring Chevy. “Hijo de...,” was all that was heard as he sped off into the night. The door became more than evidence of the occurrence, but a trophy of Gonzalo’s street credibility, which was ever after recognized even as he tried to clean up his life. As for the grinning man, he had made more than a few enemies in his time. Though Gonzalo never caught up with him directly, it was not long before justice was done.
The next day, Ana went to school, but her development was halted. She became extra leery of everyone, especially her signer. Ana felt she was trying to poison her mind with the foreign signing. In class she could neither pay attention nor dream. She was stuck in a reality that she could neither leave nor be full part of. To get away, she would go into the restroom. The signer would not follow her there. Alone, Ana went into a stall and wept, letting out a brief cry. As she sat with her head in her hands, she recalled when she had had her first period several months before. She had gone to the restroom, feeling ill, and discovered that she was bleeding. Scared and unsure what to do, she stuffed her underwear with toilet paper and hid her womanhood for the rest of the day. Marisol who shared a bedroom with her sister, discovered the secret that night. She did her best to comfort Ana and eventually convinced her that everything was okay. Ana felt even worse than that day. She felt as if life on Earth was cruel and not worth living. She wished she could stay in Luza, where life was peaceful and Ana could express herself freely to everyone. When she felt the presence of someone else in the bathroom, she finally composed herself and went on to her next class.
At lunch, Ana had no appetite. She wanted to draw, but felt uninspired. When she closed her eyes, it was the night before. So she could only watch her peers. Ana was surprised and, if only slightly, disappointed that no one was glaring or even glancing her way. At least no one appeared to be judging her as she often imagined. Of everyone in the cafeteria, only one other person sat alone as she did. She had seen the boy before without ever really noticing him. She wondered what was wrong with him, and was curious to why no one followed him around like the signer who followed her. He looked up at her sensing the gaze. Ana became shy when their eyes met, and she pretended to go back to drawing a picture.
From then on, Jeremiah found himself wondering about Ana constantly. He knew her as “the deaf Mexican girl,” but other than that he had never given her much thought, good or bad. Suddenly, he wanted to know everything about her. He fantasized about how interesting her isolated world might be. For all his curiosity, he did not even know how to go about introducing himself. He only knew some very basic Spanish, which might be useless in her case, and his knowledge of sign-language was nonexistent, unless the peace sign, or the middle finger were to be counted. Ana tried to ignore him during lunch and when they would pass in the hall between sixth and seventh period. She was scared.
A few days passed before Ana began to eat again. It was a few weeks before she could dream. For a while, her dreams were dull, common and even dark. She would wake up sweating and scared. During the day she would have to stop daydreaming if she began to think of that night behind the taquería. She became depressed and frustrated. Her work suffered and this troubled her sister and mother. Her father noticed, too, but had long recognized her sadness. Her brother was just glad that he had gone outside before anything really bad had happened. Once Ana began to sleep normally, she finally returned to Luza. There, her tía comforted her in a way that only she could. Ana returned, feeling somewhat restored in the morning. Throughout her day, she contemplated the concepts of purpose and expression that had been conveyed to her the night before. She found inspiration for an immaculate sketch, a crisp portrayal of a twelve pointed star that if one stared at it, appeared to be pulsing off of the page. She took a break to sip her juice when she noticed the solitary boy across the cafeteria. She wondered what he was drawing, and why did no one sit with him. After lunch, while dreaming in class, she had an unusual fantasy. What if she could take the boy to Luza to meet her tía. She imagined that he would probably appreciate the unique world.
That night when Ana dreamt, she spoke with her tía about the boy. Ana giggled light blue bubbles that popped with a flash of light as her tía advised her to sit beside him. “How else will you get to meet him?” A strong point made, Ana became fearless at the encouragement of her confidant. Jeremiah was startled as she stood above him at the table, the next day. She sad down beside him but shyly looked down at the table. Her confidence was quickly fading, and she wondered if she should have heeded the advise. Not knowing how to respond, Jeremiah returned to his sketching. Anna felt accepted by this and almost let out a sound of joy, but instead restrained herself. She noticed a few kids nearby who noticed them sitting together. She decided to try to act natural. She pulled out her notebook and began to sketch too. She looked up and saw Jeremiah watching.
“You like to draw?”
Ana squinted to focus on what he said. She shrugged. She had never thought of her drawing as anything significant. She reconsidered as Jeremiah marveled at the dancing lines. He didn’t know what to say.
“It’s very good.”
Ana appeared to not understand.
Jeremiah wrote it down, and then, “You should try painting.”
Ana had never taken an art class. Her elective periods were always spent working on sign language and English comprehension. She became excited by the idea. She sat down next to Jeremiah again the following day. He had hoped she would. He had brought an art book for her to look at. It showed detailed pictures of famous paintings. Ana flipped happily through the colorful pages, but stopped at the portrait of Frida Khalo. Ana read the caption and gathered that she was a famous Mexican painter. Ana knew a little about the renaissance but had never known such a thing as a female Mexican painter. She studied the familiar Mexican face as she touched her own. She tried to imagine the brush strokes that would form her own face. Ana became embarrassed when she remembered that Jeremiah was still beside her. He smiled. She did too. Just then, she could see the future.