Greg Moore.

There is no good end with a bad beginning: The Dragon Lady in the Borderlands/La Frontera

Dolores turned away, back to taking careful steps on the narrow walkway. The winds, cooling against the summer sun, always heightened on a mountainside with a threat to dislodge a hiker, lifted the hem of her parka, which she’d buttoned tight for safety. She avoided looking down at the tide pools below, which throve with sand eel and shellfish, light aqua foam, and the soothing crash of the ocean. All could well work together, Dolores knew, to lull her unaware that she might miss a step, and go tumbling down the craggy hillside, her final sleep alongside the carp and salamanders. 

       Dipthi clutched the open flaps of her windbreaker. Her short black locks danced around her round face, yellow and squinting against the breeze and sunlight. 

“I know our leader is creative in her citizenship and how she would lift us, her neophytes, above plainness in our approach to societal change.”

       Dave, a Cambodian mental health counselor, answered inquisitively, “yes…?” 

He and Dipthi met a week before at this convening of community service-minded. Students and professionals come together to learn change strategies under the guidance of an unassuming mother of many. Named Dolores at birth, she was known respectfully in pertinent circles as the Dragon Lady.  

      Diphti and Dave trailed the rest of the group by a few yards. “We follow too close.” Dolores had said at the start of their descent. “If one falls, we all follow, our reflex having us reach out to grab them.” They paused and talked a moment, Dipthi voicing her mind and Dave hoping his friend sees something in him she likes.

“But isn’t this little hike a bit over the top… don’t you think? I mean, a wrong step…one of us could get hurt!” Dipthi focused back on the footpath and took brief steps forward. Dave, waiting to proceed, made one careful step of his measuring, easily two of Dipthi’s.

“Is anyone frightened?” A shrill but calm voice asked. The words floated up through the group like cigarette smoke. Responses came reluctant and choppy and spurted out.   

              “Scared? I’m terrified!”  

              “You? I hate hiking… I don’t want to get broken falling over these rocks.”

              “Well, I’m not scared. A measured step at a time. This is easy!”

              “I only know about easy if you’ve done it enough to be confident. But I’m not scared. I won’t lie and say I’m easygoing, though.”

             “Same here, pretty much, but what the…?

A sleek red-tail whoosh passed, wings hugged in as he entered a tide pool without a splash, emerging clutching a fat white bass.

      “Timely,” Dolores said. “Life is brief, depending on where we sit in the hierarchy of society or, as for that fish, where we land in the food chain. In his case, unlike in society, his whiteness was a target that the hawk spotted from afar.”

      “Well…; duh,” Dipthi murmured low so as not to be heard.  

      “Exhale, everyone. We’re in sight of our target. We don’t have to hike all the way down to the pools. Here… you’ll see when you get down to where I am…off to the right is our surprise.”

                           Luckless

 It was then that the breeze became lively

 Whipping itself into a wind that bounced 

 free off the hillside.

 Down the coast, some 400, less than 500 miles

 is another peninsula, the Dragon Lady said  

 The waters are no less blue than the waters here,

  but those waters are camouflaged for sand soaked 

 Soaked the sand is with mixed blood

 blood of the Mestiza, the discarded Latina, those grouped,

 those are tagged as having a ‘bad beginning.’

 Blacks had a bad beginning, and it explains

 why their enslavement occurred, and why their end is 

 fouled since they will always be Black. 

In this way, they are similar, their plight likened to

 the Latina…ahh, sweet Latina, who has comforted her babe near her bosom

 Ahh! How she gurgles and coos! She’s happy—yes— she doesn’t know

 of her bad beginning, of the battlements beyond the tide pools

 Near the border  

 She doesn’t know, poor babe, that her padre won’t appear

 at her quinceañera, won’t arise from the blooded battlefield

 where maiz now grows, tended well by Latino farm hands 

 that won’t display the wedding 

 the band that their sub-poverty pay won’t allow, that show instead

 knuckles blistered from overwork, scorched hard from abuse

 like breaking hard-caked dirt under the blazing sun, 

 of the Farmer’s boot that stomps his discontent, that stomps one’s 

 hope of rising one day, of perhaps living better. The boot that

 confirms lucklessness for one

born of a bad beginning.

“The fool,” Dolores began, “says the Latino, the Black, the Asian, yes, I know you’re treated better for your technology, but that’s where the racist’s favor ends. The Indigenous tribes that tilled the frontier lands that America calls their own today; yes, the fool considers us all unlucky for being born non-White, calls us hopeless because we’re doomed to die the way we started.”

      Indignation in the form of grants and foreheads was wrinkling from some neophytes. But more nods of assent and smiles were coming from the enlightened.  

     “The purpose of this convening is to acknowledge the socio-political injustice that Latinos and Blacks face, and that affects all people if we are indeed what we profess, which is one nation under God.”

     “But what…” Dipthi regretted speaking her mind before the words cleared her mouth. 

But she’d started, so she’d go through with it. “But Dolores, why did we take that difficult hike down the hillside…more like a mountainside! I admit I didn’t appreciate that.” 

Nods, grumbling, and looks of astonishment at this unaccomplished young lady who would talk with an affront to their proven fearless leader.  

      “That hike,” Dolores started, “was as close as I dared take you to an actual walk along the Mexico-American border. What I want you to do is to imagine scaling down, not this peninsula wall, but one some 450 miles up the coast, where battlements are manned with helmeted officers shouldering automatic rifles. Imagine doing what we just did, with no promise of bathing or sleeping for indeterminable days. Upon reaching the bottom, imagine vanishing into a stealthy creep until the opportunity came to either dash across the border or hook up with a coyote to conduct us in extreme compaction and discomfort into the U.S.”

      As the neophytes, disgruntled, returned to meekness, understanding, and innocence, and all eyes were now cast on Dipthi, in concert, all voiced a silent “well?”

     “I can’t imagine it,” Dipthi said quietly, her head down, her windbreaker buttoned and hugged tight over her petite frame.

      “And don’t worry, Dipthi,” Dolores said. “Neither I’m sure, can anyone else here, perhaps, save for myself.” Again, eyes rose, this time all trained upon the Dragon Lady. “And I say that only because I believe only a fool says that the Black, Asian, Native, Chicano, Mulatto, Mestiza, and anyone born into marginalization is hampered with a ‘bad beginning.’”  

      Her voice was steady and calm, but a fire rose from within her. One could see it, along with the spirit of courage and hope exuded from her. She inspired all by her presence, by the glow of love that was a fire that lit her soul. “We are from different heritages, but we also share a heritage: we are people and one nation under God! 

That is an excellent starting point, people! That is a starting point of empowerment! A starting point of heritage! A starting point of power and hope!”

       And the fire from the engine of the lead Jeep broke the silence of nature, the peninsula having calmed, one might think, in reverence of the words of our Dragon Lady.