Conviviality

= CONVIVIALITY =
== By Carol Zapata-Whelan ==
=== This short story appeared on East of the Web in 2013 ===
The four men ahead and across are holding a
loud conversation in Arabic. One of them makes gestures with the hand motions
of a flamenco dancer, and it is difficult to tell if he is arguing or just
telling a story. On the table, in front of the man, are a pack of cigarettes
and a cardboard box of opened Sprite and Coca Cola cans that seem to resist all
our lurching and swaying. He and his friends wear different colors of the same
cheap plaid, a common dress I've seen in the orchards. 
I can pretend we are on a ship: there is
nothing but blue water on the right, blue water that could be an entire ocean,
its sky keener, larger than our own summer sky, pale and subdued between
mountain ranges. But the next stop is ,
where the men across, no doubt, will get off for a few minutes and stub
half-smoked cigarettes when the conductor calls. 
The blue of the bay is gone. I watch the
green lines of crops, the white-skinned eucalyptus trees, the solitary oaks
move past in slow motion. A row ahead of the men, a group of high school girls
with glossy hair and spaghetti straps plays a clapping game that does not seem
to annoy the other passengers. There is a lull in the Arabic, and I can hear a
child singing in Spanish from across the aisle. 
"Senora, " says a male voice.
"Would your daughter like a soda?" The child's mother, a pretty girl
in drab polyester, smiles without showing her teeth, shakes her head "no
." 
Then again, this time in Spanish:
"Senora, what is your daughter's name?" 
"Mercedes," the woman answers and
turns her attention back to the little girl, who is coloring with a pen on a
notepad. The sun is starting to set, turning cloud wisps neon red in the
dimming light. 
"Senora. Why are you so sad?" I
put down my magazine to look between seats for the Spanish speaker. It is the
Arab with flamenco hands. He pronounces his words like a native, and if it were
not for his body language, he could pass for a Latino. I notice he has a goatee
and a blue Lakers cap. His companions doze. 
"You speak Spanish," the little
girl's mother says without evident surprise. 
"I am 50 percent Arab, 50 percent
Mexican." 
"Ah." 
"I am Pancho." 
"Pancho?" The woman's politeness
hides her disbelief. "Is your mother or your father from ?" 
"I lived there." 
She seems to consider this for a while and
then asks, "Where is life more difficult?" 
I cannot hear the answer because "" blares
through the loudspeaker. The man called Pancho rouses his sleeping friends. As
they move off to share their cigarette pack, the electrical system abruptly
shuts down, the fluorescence of sunset our only light. A sudden silence has
replaced the air conditioning's white noise; it is as if the train were holding
its breath. 
When the lights finally flutter on and the
train resumes its own sounds, the windows are black. A passenger moves down to
grab the vacated table across from the Arabs, who are filing back in, smelling
of ash and smoke. They watch idly as the other passenger installs a black
instrument case, slaps a San Francisco Chronicle on her table and sets down a
fast-food bag. She is in a plain t-shirt and dark leather vest. Her hair is
white and shorn, and she has three silver rings in each eyebrow. 
The train's gaining momentum rocks us all
into silence. I doze a few miles before registering the voice of the woman with
an instrument case. 
"Punk rock. My stepson's the lead
singer." 
"Oh yeah? I play too." It is
Pancho's voice again, this time in an elastic English: he sounds almost
American. 
"Acoustic or classical?" she
asks. I wonder to myself if those are discreet categories. 
"I play with Buck Owens." 
"Bullshit." 
The high school girls have stopped their
clapping game and are pretending to speak in Spanish between laughing fits. The
Mexican mother is patiently braiding her little girl's hair. The Arab leans
over, flicks the edge of the punk rock musician's opened Chronicle. 
"Can I see the sports section? I have
to know about the Lakers." 
"You need to wait until I'm
done," she says, not raising her head. 
"Man, that's messed up," he
mutters. The woman starts humming. 
Outside the Valley is invisible. I cannot
see the farms, the steep canals, the trailers, the the muted gold of dry
stretches. I have spent the day in a fabled place more distant than a train
ride away, a well-lit world under a brighter sky, with Nobel Laureate parking
spaces and catacombs lined with books. Distending my backpack is a thick folder
with a schedule for Orientation sessions on academics, financial aid, tours,
and a period entitled, "Conviviality." What happens in that time
slot, people there wondered: a panel on dorm life, clubs, drinking on campus? 
"I was majoring in law, getting a
doctorate in law at ," the musician
is telling Pancho. He nods. Then she hands him a photograph. 
"Their eyes are-- " . 
"My ex-husband's Japanese," she
explains. "He's just a sperm donor." 
"A sperm--" 
"I got a nice lady." 
"You live together?" 
"We thought about getting married. You
think it'd be legal in ,
but there's too much chaos in the Bay Area . . .too much stigma. . . ." 
"There's a bar in . Man, that place is packed!"
says Pancho. 
"I don't go for that shit." 
I look back down at an article in El Andar.
I bought the Latino magazine last week at a Valley bookstore; its cover photo
is one of a pair of eyes staring through a rectangle cut in black fabric. When
I was paying for the magazine, a blond girl behind the bank of registers
pointed to the cover with interest. She found it amazing that women in the could live with their faces covered. That's
actually Subcomandante Marcos, I pointed out. Yeah, she went on, addressing her
customer, it's just so incredible that these women insist on being hidden no
matter how much you might try to help them. I guess it's just how you're
raised, she shrugged. The customer, taking her credit card, nodded knowingly:
you just can't impose your culture on other peoples. 
The young Mexican mother is buckling sandals
on her little daughter's feet, smoothing down her clothes as the loudspeaker
comes alive. The Arab called Pancho looks pointedly at his companions, who sit,
weary, noncommital, suppressing smiles. The punk rock musician is humming again
over her newspaper. Now and then she reads a word out loud. 
The tracks' irregularities are more
pronounced as we slow. I zip El Andar in my purse and stand to sling on the
backpack, avoiding eye contact, spotting on the floor a few extra Orientation
hand-outs with the day's schedule of sessions. I remember that at the end of
one of those sessions, a student counselor with a tongue stud sat on a table
taking questions. She confessed that the "Conviviality" segment on
our itinerary was a mystery to counselors and participants alike. "None of
us knew what it meant," she admitted. But "Conviviality," she
explained, is "just a scheduled social time" - an opportunity for
people to meet and talk. Someone from out-of-state had told her that day that
"conviviality" is commonly heard where she lives. "I've moved
all around 
my whole life," said the counselor, "and I've never used it."
Category:Zapata-Wheland
Category:East-of-the-web
Category:Web-Published