Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The River Comes to You

1987; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3346266

1536-0334

Martha Boethel,

Caribbean history, culture, and politics

We used to go swimming in the Navidad, keeping an eye out for moccasins, shaking minnows away from our toes. The water was lukewarm, brown, the bottom oozy and slick with cottonwood leaves. But the light, the smells, the snorts of grackles high in the trees, grapevines looping along the bank-I might have been in Africa; could live in the sky, in a hollow tree, dive from my door into the magic water. We flattened the a's in Navidad; still knew the word was Spanish, meaning Christmas. How could a skinny brown creek with mud-colored catfish sleeping along its bottom be named to honor the birth of Jesus? pictured de Soto and his soldiers camped along the river bank: they sit cross-legged around the fire in their armor and skirts, singing carols and swapping gifts. The Karankaways watch them from the underbrush. My one and only ever best friend-our maid and cook, Martha Marie-knew the river, too. I watched it, fished it, but never set foot in it, 'cept just once, a long while ago. And then that river, it came to me! It was my favorite story, when the river came to Martha Marie, and begged her to tell it again and again. They lived in a shanty near the river, on the Kopecky's land. Her mama'd just had a baby, another girl. She was sick from childbed, awake half the night. And when she got up for a cool cloth to wipe her face, she put her foot into water, felt the river rising up through the floor. Their daddy woke Martha and the other kids, pulled them up and out the door, and they ran, splashing through the fields, to the three big pecan trees in the bottom. Their daddy lifted them up, up, tying the young ones to branches with sheets.