I. The Second Barefoot Diva
It was a night as regular as any night on the island, with the stars and galaxies playing out their dramas for all to see. Our girl, Lua, found herself on the verge of losing consciousness. Her shell of a body salted by ocean curls, sweat trailing her tan lines and the tides inching to their final crescendo…begging to take her home. Try as we might, there are some sirens we cannot ignore. The song of the warbler calls of destiny and Lua was bound to a prophecy declared from the old world. Tragically inescapable. With a name like that…what else could we expect?
It means moon in Portuguesa. And when has folklore about the moon ever disappointed us with mystery, intrigue and elusiveness? Ask the town drunk in Praia and he’ll tell you some bullshit like this.
Legend has it our girl was born during the rebellion. Her mother, hiding from the heat of war, labored for five minutes suspended on a branch of some tamarind tree. How? I don’t know. Why didn’t the Portuguese motherfuckers look up? I don’t know. All we know is her smile lighted up the whole island. From North to South.
Now, you give this bêbado another shot of rum, and he’ll tell you the newborn’s smile was used to win the war. Something about blinding beauty…rays of hope casting colonialists back to the seas. Again, he probably don’t know. Hell, nobody really knows but that’s why I love us. We can spin the finest silk from the thinnest web of lies.
Our new moon shot in with all the youth of the 70’s. The hope of a new generation. Like the rest of the island’s children, she was a bastard child with too many uncles to count. Our Lua took after Cesária Évora. The neighborhood called her the second barefoot diva. With a whisper of her dulcet voice, she could call a sailor’s tavern to attention. After a year of private lessons, she could command the seas with an arpeggio. Her mother would lose her for days on end only to find her in her true home. Beached with the turtles. Moving the tides with each syncopated melody. By the time our girl was 9, mamãe stopped looking. She didn’t need ancient wisdom to know she could never stop a child from turning to her nature. “Essa garota não pertence aqui,” she would say. Lua’s full light was always in the heavens. And far as she could tell, there would only be one way to get to that resting place.
II. Minha Gente
Exhale. Then, breathe again. You are meeting someone with a burden too great to bear. Have you ever met this supernova of a person? Their energy packs the force of an explosion into the precision of a pinprick. It’s nothing short of a miracle for those who can recognize it. You can tell you are meeting one of the gods. Each night, a different face of a prism too celestial for your viewing.
What a beauty. To be born of the violence of that revolution is an unattainable feat. A part of her always knew she would never repeat it in her lifetime. Yet, she spent every night illuminating the town with her grace. She covered every port, canal, path, corner, beach and street in search of that unattainable beauty. At 13 years old, having laid her light on every centimeter of that land, she rested. Where else but home? Near the melancholy seas. The sound of each pensive wave crashing on its brother, land. Natural rhythm. She found the ocean’s amnesia haunting. How could such a thing endlessly fulfill the same task? Night after night. Ignoring the sands of time and beating to its own cadence. Yet, without ever seeing, she knew this beast held every secret of the universe. Each drop capturing a sliver of history. Our collective memory crashing on our land. A compendium brought to life all by the sound of her music.
Like I said, while most began the climb to their peak at 13, Lua rested. She knew her glow would only wane until her vanishing point. Little time left to grow love but such was the nature of her prophecy.
With a town of uncles, every suitor was a cousin. Forbidden to taste, but the girl could look. First, it was the boy with the tattered covers. Angel. A softness in his eyes beckoned her imagination. After-all, the girl was born with the gift of sight. The kind of person that can see your ancestors in the room. Without exchanging words, she could see his father burning in the fires of the war. A forgotten infantryman of the rebellion whose name would never be sung. Another look and she would see further back. 100 years prior. The memory of his pregnant grandmother, tortured with embers until her flesh succumbed to the burns. Angel spent his days as an apprentice with the woodworker— inhaling enough sawdust to feed the fire that would one day take his lungs. Câncer de pulmão.
Then, there was Markandeya who everyone called Mar. She was the daughter of an Indian merchant who lost his fortunes long before she was born and a mother descended from slaves who passed on her family’s drumming traditions. Mar was a prodigy of Batuque, a musical style born of rebellion. Through percussion and harmonies, the women of Cape Verde managed to create a musical genre that captured the endless sorrow and hope to rejoin their loved ones. That’s why I love us. We can spin the lightest magic from the thickest pain.
III. Careless Love/In The Fields of Gerbera
Mar and Lua. A story that writes itself. Have you ever experienced the innocence of a first love? The kind of love that baths its memories in hues of rose and lavender. Four feet stomping through fields of gerbera daisies. Moving with the rhythm of two souls in perfect alignment. Hands breezing past felt petals. It was careless love.
Two people in love walk through the world in a trance-like state obvious to everyone around them. They orbit a different time-space they can’t name and the rest of us know better than to touch it. Look, but don’t touch. And looking through Mar’s eyes, Lua experienced what was before just a feat of her imagination. She would see an elusive mystery. A shape-shifting allure whose only constant was change. How? I don’t know, my friends. That’s between Mar and the god of such things. But if you ask the Town Drunk of Praia, here’s what he’ll tell you:
"Lord, oh lord. That poor child. We used to call her mother the Bruja of the East. Legend says she bewitched that girl’s father with some shit you can only find in the mountains. Why else would an Indian choose a woman who lost her pocket mirror? Folks used to carry little mirrors in their pockets to make sure the sun wasn’t impacting their complexion too much. Doesn’t matter how you mix it though. A cow could fuck a bruja and she'd birth another bruja. That blood is thicker than life, mein. The night Mar was born, the cord of life was tied around her neck. Hence the name…Mar…kan…dey…a. In some Indian tongue, it means “one who conquers death”. Her mother wanted to name her after her mother, Maria del Mar, so they settled on Markandeya and Mar for short. Something about that child never seemed right though ya get?
Born to die — a destiny with equal opportunity for all. No wonder they found each other. What of our boy, Angel? Well, he was the safe bet. The morning star. From sunup to sundown, Lua would stop by for coffee, a sandwich, and sometimes even afternoon delight of teenage proportions if they could find shadows. As it was forbidden for young love to coalesce in the evenings, the nights were strictly reserved for Mar. Though, it was never discussed out loud, he had to have known. It is impossible for an open heart to filter much of anything and Lua’s love was effusive.
Imagine, Truth is the river rushing and flowing through life. Your body? The makeshift dam. The amateur otter playing engineer. You won’t last. Neither did they.
That was Lua & Mar. Flowing like truth through the streets, in a city of no angels. Blue chiffon dress marked with the stains of adolescence. The hormonal sweat signaling the rise of a new moon. Pure unadulterated energy. Leaping from stall to stall. Those two were a sharp contrast alright. One full of life…the other?…stamped from the beginning with Death’s mark. A modern love for the ages. Makes you jealous doesn’t it? Reawakens the desire to awaken. To be 14 again and have an entire world of pleasure opened. Plucked like a ripe mango burdening a branch with its maturation.
Try as we might, permanence is unpredictable. And yet, there’s no life to be built in the middle. Wavering between fear and dreams. When your country has the lost the colonialist lottery, you’re left building a home from scraps. The government can’t pay for much of anything so the country is fueled on dreams. Maybe that’s why we were so unaware of these two committing such sin right under our noses.
A ruse? Not so much. It’s our fault we see what we want to see. Selective bias. Two girls frolicking under the night breeze with only dead palm leaves for modesty and we still think of innocence. It’s hard to deviate from scripts. None were the wiser to this forbidden love except Mar. She’d always known. As soon as she turned five, she felt it. That feeling of belonging to a tribe that did not belong. Some of us, we were born subversive. We knew the world was not ours and yet it was precisely for our difference that we lived. We saw the dark side of the moon and appreciated a view the rest would never be privy to. Lua was a type and Mar knew how to play the long game.
The first night their bodies made love was a sort of out of body experience. One-sided. Denial was hard to break. Lua, disoriented with no help from her visual prowess, felt blindsided yet entirely seduced. She knew she wasn’t resisting, but she also wasn’t sprinting towards the inevitable conclusion. Mar had a gravity. An attractive force that pulled Lua into an orbit she didn’t want to resist. The way their bodies made love perfectly mirrored their journey to romantic enchantment. A journey Mar was all too familiar with. Hands tracing outlines. Reproducing perimeters. Searching grooves, goosebumps and lines…waiting for a sign of repulsion.
By night 2 it was more of rumble but first, it was a tumble. Children playing the game of boundaries. Pushing the edges. Acquiescence is a journey not a destination. Like falling in love, Mar knew some women needed to have this truth drawn from them. She was the syringe carefully and methodically drawing erotic energy from faint veins throbbing beneath layers of shame. Then, the moment of silence. Eyes dueling then resting at the sign of consent. This was where the battle was won. The prisoner was set free with one vocation in mind. Passion.
The rest? The reason you’re still reading? Well, I’ve heard it’s pure softness. Fusion. Two bodies melting into one. A kiss turns into an extension of self. Erotic pulses travel and return in continuous flow. So fluid. So effortless. Someone born with all the instinct to move you. Make you sway like the tides. To and fro…tongue lapping over breasts. Pausing at each nipple to feel the hardened shell. The mound trapping eruptions of life. The power of a body that can give life is immense. Downright celestial. Men could never handle such eros. We would go mad and soft. Confused into stupefied warless states. But, maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
What I do know is on the first night Mar and Lua made love, our girl felt an undeniable qi coursing through her body. The heat of a thousand suns concentrated on one engorged epicenter. Like electricity lighting every neuron from her clitoris to the base of her spine. Mar swore the spasms perfectly fit the slight off-kilter rhythm of a batuque original.
Natural rhythm.
IV. Ephemeral
My friends, none were the wiser. Not Angel. Not the baker on Cinco Calle. Not mamae and her songbirds. Not the school children chasing footballs and leaving storms of dust and laughter in their trails. Not the shopkeeps, nuns, and businessmen. Nor the flora or fauna…none were the wiser, and that was the greatest delight of all. Aphra says love ceases to be a pleasure when it is no longer a secret. The thrill of the shadows. The erotic charge of getting away with taboo. You can’t beat that kind of sex. Try. I dare you. No…we…dare you.
Before I bring this story to a close, I would be remiss to leave you without the violence. The gentle violence of Angel Montoya’s love. The boy stuck to Lua like an ocean hugging teeming shores. Yes, across the gerbera fields, he laid incognito. Behind. Always behind…ten paces behind each stall, corner, post…he lurked. Eyes darting between envy and regret. Men driven by possession always fail to break the script. The same story told across each millennia. A tale as old as time. You know how this ends. You know where it ends. A shell of a body salted by ocean curls.
—
Some people know their destiny and they know they can never escape it. Try as they might, only the spirit of the heavens can interdict. And, quite often, the Gods could care less about our trials. And even less about how we love. Maybe that’s what happened on the 16th of May. No one was on duty to prevent Angel from breaking his own heart. It was 3 days past the crescent moon which held the only light that guided those two lovers into pools of love and lust. Truth is I don’t really know what happened or who was to blame but if you ask the town drunk of Praia, here’s what he’ll tell you:
Mein, there’s tragedy and there’s this. Forget Romeo and Oedipus. The Greeks never suffered enough to write tales like this eh? Nah, they weren’t this cursed. It went something like this. Soon as the sun went pale, and the clouds flew to reveal the night moon, they came. It wasn’t the rumbling, the pebbles dancing towards the sky, marching to the beat of street justice. That arcane fucked-up understanding of the world. A leftover from the Spaniards and their prudish ways. I don’t know how a people who invented siestas could be so hateful. So arrogant.
Anyway, it wasn’t the rumbling or even the history. It wasn’t the chants nor the door knock. None of the sirens rang that morning…those usual warning calls were not to blame for the awareness of Maria del Mar’s granddaughter. You see, death doesn’t leave its mark on just anybody. No, our girl was a choooosen one. And with all that luck came privileges such as waking at 4 in the morning on the day of your death with the most foreign feeling of certainty, calm, and assurance that this day would be your last in this form. Why she didn’t resist? Well, I already told you. Brujas do what brujas do around here, ya get? It’s too sad, mein. You tell it.
Love is what we are born with, but on this island, we learn fear. We revel in it. And with the force and lure of a thousand moons, we pull your door apart. Rip your clothes. Drag you through the streets. My uncle calls them public displays of affection. “Teach the children we don’t play that shit ya know?” They tied her ponytail to the mule. Little by little…every strand pulled off. In the old days, we called it nature’s beauty salon. A treat reserved for the misfits. Yes, the ones born…subversiva.
She arrived at the sacred tree bald, bloodied, and battered. Too similar to some of the other women on this island. Hers was just public.
“Bofe!”…some words you can only learn through experience. On the streets when we are truly left to our own devices, we meet our real selves.
“Bofe!”…she first heard it in grade school. How the fuck do kids figure that shit out so quickly? Truth…rushing through. The body isn’t born as a dam.
“Bofe!”…the spiteful uncle dejected…pitiful yet all too common. Uncles — a therapist’s gold mine.
There was no hope for us. None. And it sure wouldn’t make a surprise appearance on this night. What else would the bards sing of in the canteens of Praia? Peace wasn’t her destiny. Never was. On this island, bofes had one destination. One prophecy. The Navega Tree.
Named for the way those grouped tamarind leaves swayed in the wind. Navega was the tallest tree on the island. It could be seen from all corners of the town, perched on that hill of a mountain. Per tradition, they would send the lankiest child with a rope tied to his waist and the cords resting across his chest. The people would chant and chant until he reached the highest branch where he’d tie the knot. At the top, the boy would perch and remain there for the rest of the ceremony. The signal was the dropping of the ripest tamarind he would find on his way up. Plucked and released from its maturation.
After the pop and the tuft of dirt billowing up, there was utter silence. The kind that kills with its deafening impact. Close your eyes in the forest and you’ll hear the winds breezing through the canopy. It sounds like a whisper. Nature’s attempt at tranquility still resembles art. On this night, the whispers comforted Mar as the rope tightened around her neck. Soon, it would at least be over. The torment was always worse than the deed.
Markandeya. A lie of a name. Who in this life could conquer death?
She died on the way up. Three men hoisted her body as the village voyeurs tracked. She scaled the length of Navega until she was about 3 ft below the peak. Still. Head bowed. An offering to the gods.
Just like that, it was over. As quickly and quietly as it began.
V. Born To Die
Try as we might, permanence is unpredictable.
Her body hung for three days and three nights. On the last night, as was customary, her family burned her body to ashes and spread her in the ocean. Some legend about upending the curse of the bofes. No chance of reincarnation if the spirit was diffused across the vast multitude of the ocean.
Try as we might, our boy Angel had no chance of pulling Lua from her home. If she was glued to the shores before, this all but sealed her fate. She laid there unmoving and unmovable. He tried. Hell, they all did. Some brought food. Others brought water. They continued and continued until finally, they stopped. Figured eventually the girl would break her vows. He tried with words. Songs. Even dances. He brought cakes, fresh coconuts, and even her favorite guitarista. This neighborhood kid who went corner to corner singing the same 9 songs on loop. Nada. She sat there. Forever pensive and fixing her gaze on the love of her life. She seemed to be trying to take it all in. Hard to do that with an ocean.
It happened on the seventh night of her vigil. Ten minutes to the midnight hour. Could have been something in the air. Could have just been spirit. She never felt more knowing. Her sight was never clearer, as she gazed into his soul and retrieved the truth of what happened that night. She saw his sprint into town. His furious writing. Scribbling the naked bare truth he had just witnessed into the closes thing to parchment he could find. She saw his hurried pace past the cellars, past the inns, and straight into the keep. She saw the tears sliding down his face as he slipped her truth, her light, beneath the priest’s door.
The rest…well…you remember.
What does it mean to be born to die? These sorts of fables always reveal the tenderness of the heart. They scream tragedy to the poetic siren of the universe. The mysterious alchemy that makes life a miracle and death its only equal.
Nobody knows exactly how Lua died but they don’t question why. Or even when. Ask the town drunk of Praia about the seventh night of her vigil and here’s what he’ll probably tell you.
Not all fools are men but all men are fools…mein. My avó loved reminding me of that and the older I get…the more I regret her truth. Story goes something like this…maybe it was the full moon, maybe it was the tragedy, or maybe it was just prophecy. All we know is that fool didn’t even see it. He felt it. Felt her feeling his betrayal. He bowed his head in shame in response to that piercing gaze of hers and by the time he could life his head. She was gone like the wind. Vanished. Leaving only a whisper of her memory. The tides washed away evidence of her trail. Not event the light of the midnight moon helped. If you ask me, I think the girl walked in. Love will do that you know? What else could?
And the boy? Well, legend says that was Mar’s revenge. He is why there isn’t ever a low tide in our little island. Sure as night is dark, you will find our little Angelito posted on some corner of the beach emptying his teas into our goddess ocean. Head bowed. Waiting for Lua to return from her walk. Tears flowing like the river. Truth. Rushing and flowing.
There you have it. Our three lovers forever linked. Mar in the sea. Angel on the land. And Lua, lifted to the sky…the only way she ever knew.
Who writes the music of revolution? The kind that orphans children, traps them in cycles of abuse and dysfunctions. Left to their devices, they love everyone with twisted understandings of life.
For your sake and mine, let’s skip the sorrow. This story is sad enough and you can tell we aren’t headed for a happy ending.