Departure From Normalcy

Teresa’s mind is the waiting room of the Venezuelan consulate on a Tuesday afternoon. Each of the four walls is coated in faded eggshell-white-turned-yellow paint, little corners and nooks peeling like dandruff off the great scalp of Bolivarian bureaucracy. The chairs line every flat surface, neatly crammed together. On the side tables, there are three or four copies of Spanish tabloids, pages papery like Latin skin exposed too long to unaccustomed cold and colors faded so they blend more into the walls with every passing day. There is a pressing emptiness about the consulate of Teresa’s mind, a slowness of pace that rivals that of even the most sun-soaked days on the beaches of the island of Margarita. On Tuesday afternoons, there are only ever two or three people in the waiting room at the same time. They are almost always elderly, wilting bodies wrapped in crepe paper button-downs or bird of paradise dresses whose colors fail to soar to the height of those shades from back home. As time passes, marked only by the moving arms of the occupants’ wristwatches, the young attendant manning the desk appears every few minutes, smacking wads of chewing gum or meticulously refilling her lined lips before disappearing again into the consulate’s maze of back offices. She never calls any names. Minutes melt into hours melt into days and the drone of the consulate’s television is never-ending. Not a word leaves the occupant’s parched lips as they sit, shrinking into their starched shirts in a slowly dominating fight between their timeworn memories and the stifling, sluggish heat of mundane red tape restrictions to this one’s citizenship or that one’s papers or whoever’s infinitesimal attempt at belonging.

Of course, to Maria Teresa, named after her grandmother, there is no windingly painful bureaucracy present. In fact, the words “bureaucracy” or “consulate” barely take up space in her mind—she has never felt the spinal compression that results from waiting for governmental redemption that does not come. Maria Teresa sits on the floor in front of her abuelita and registers only the derivation of emptiness, something she has come to associate with aging and reaching that stage in life where home seems more a distant sketch than a full color painting you live within. The television runs in the background, a similarity between their two worlds, but Maria Teresa pays it no attention. The steady murmur of Venezuelan news reporters is an all-too-familiar soundtrack to her visits to abuelita that are so rarely are allowed to give way to the singsong tones of mermaids and princesses and young girl explorers. Today her grandmother had promised to watch a movie with her but there were still two hours until their agreed upon time. To kill the time, Maria Teresa bounces two Polly Pockets around on the oatmeal colored carpet of her grandmother’s room.

The television in Teresa’s consulate brain crackles behind her eyes as though transmitted by one of those wire frame picture boxes of times long past. The occupants let it score their yearning, registering only a few common phrases.

“…two more hospitals in Caracas today reported losing complete power, taking the death toll of patients up to 15 in the last two days alone. Five of those were newborn children, as…”

“…still no words from Leopoldo Lopez, as he remains on house arrest. His wife…”

“…Nicolas Maduro gave a speech denouncing the call for nationwide protests, accusing the United States government of conspiring to overthrow his rightfully elected government. It is obvious, to the Venezuelan people, that it is a farce. Diosdado…”

Defeat follows disappointment follows dying supplies of righteous anger from the lungs of a population whose sore throat screams are mouse squeaks whimpers on the world stage. The news feed is such a common soundtrack that the first occurrence of a dissonant note does not register until it crescendos suddenly.

“…just in, president of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó has announced he is invoking article 233 of the Constitution, which dictates that in the event that there is no president elected, the president of the National Assembly must assume the interim presidency. Guaido has cited May 20’s fraudulent elections and their empowerment of a dictatorial government headed by a usurper as the right cause for invoking article 233 and stepping in as interim president until free and fair elections can be held. Guaidó was surrounded by protesters in Caracas while…”

A circuit shorts in the consulate and high flames of red, yellow, and blue engulf all surfaces. The occupants’ bodies contort, snakelike and melding into the rush and roar and redemption of the fire until all is a dancing mass of living burning reds, soaring yellows, sinuous blues, wildfire bodies jubilating to the clave beat of change.

Maria Teresa hears her abuelita before she feels her. There is first a sharp intake of breath and then the crashing wave of what she imagines asphyxiation sounds like.

“Abuelita!”

Before she can turn, Teresa has taken Maria Teresa in her arms. She holds her, tears escaping cataracted eyes so quickly Maria Teresa is caught in the whirlpool rush of her mother’s washing machine. Her grandmother’s arms squeeze her, constriction more akin to her mother’s still youthful arms than to the veiny trembling of Teresa’s life force. Her grandmother’s warbled cries shift, giving way to a word that Maria Teresa’s English-first brain cannot immediately discern. The word morphs like clay being shaped by the divine hands of Teresa’s histories, and fattens until it consumes Teresa’s little ears.

“Finalmente.”

Finalmente.

— Contributing writer Carla E. Troconis' column, "Ni Aquí Ni Allá," fictionalizes political developments in Venezuela from the past year through the eyes of the diaspora.