A few moons ago, I stayed in Casa Elena, a magical cottage in San Miguel de Allende built by Lena Bartula above her artspace. Just me, a mountain of Spanish grammar books, a pencil, and some fairy dust. I intended to immerse myself in Spanish. Maybe this would be the year I lined up my grammar, including those despicable imperfect subjunctives.
Before leaving New York City, I told a friend, “If I die and end up going to hell, the first thing I’ll do is find the guy who invented the imperfect subjunctive and tell him to go to hell. So, to speak.” She said, “It’s your fear, Roberta. Fear has everything to do with everything.” My response was succinct, yet, profound. “OY!” was all I could say.
For my flight to Mexico, I brought along some novels by Elena Poniatowska and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. As soon as the plane took off, their words began seeping out of my backpack and swirling around the cabin, words like, “fear, mystery, magic, immortality…” Márquez kept insisting that I unfasten my seat belt. “No way!” I yelled, out loud.
The first morning at Casa Elena, I brought my clay teapot out to my roof deck. Surrounded by mountains and participles dangling from purple Jacaranda trees, I drank in nouns, adjectives, gerunds and stem-changing verbs. It was surprisingly pleasant. I thought to myself, “This must be what they mean by present perfect.”
Griselda, my beloved Spanish teacher and friend, stopped by in the afternoon to work on vocabulary. When she told me the word for breast pecho was masculine, EL pecho I was appalled: How could breast be a masculine word? Knowing she was part angel, I asked her if she had a magic spell that could make breasts feminine LA pecha. She said her divine powers were limited. (Looking back, that surprises me because teaching me to speak Spanish was nothing short of a miracle.) “But,” she continued, “I know an incantation to make the word “penis” feminine LA pene. She jumped out of her chair and shouted “Abracadabra” as she spun herself around in circles eighteen times — counterclockwise, of course. And then, POOF! Penises throughout the land became feminine!
That night, I collapsed onto the turquoise blanket that covered Casa Elena’s bed and, with my head submerged in a cocoon of Mexican pillows, fell into a deep sleep. The spirits who inhabited dozens of Lena’s Indigenous huipils many past preterites ago left her downstairs art gallery and ascended the stairs where they cavorted around my room. The one with a lot of tattoos asked everyone what our pronouns were while another prepositioned me.
Then, the whole coven began sprinkling imperfect subjunctives into my brain. I heard them say, “Let’s do an exorcism for ridding fears. Gringos have a lot of fears, especially when it comes to the imperfect subjunctive.” More “Abracadabras.” My body began shaking.
A few days later I stopped shaking. I felt peaceful and light, having been purged of my fears. It was time to emerge from my retreat. I stepped out of Casa Elena. Grounded in the cobblestone streets of Barrio Guadalupe, I opened my mouth to speak and flocks of imperfect subjunctives flew out of my throat.
“Si hubiera sabido del poder de la magia, no habría tenido miedo.”
“If I had known about the power of magic, I would not have been afraid.” G&S
This is lovely! Thank you!
Magical♥️!