The long and the corte

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The long and the corte

I came to San Mateo on the 5th of January, not that it matters. Exact dates, in San Mateo, are as insignificant as styles of women’s pants. Here, jeans, pajamas, velvet britches—just pants. Upon arrival, I felt the same way about Cortes, the curtain like “skirts” within which Mateanas hid their legs. They all looked like cylindrical boxes splattered with too many colors.
I had taken too many anthropology classes to condemn the Corte, but I couldn’t help wondering why women continued to wear them while Mayan men had traded their traditional striped trousers for jeans long ago. Were Cortes were more economical? Definitely not. I found out later that Mateanas spent upwards of 500Q (80$) on each of their shrouds. A monthly wage squandered on each Corte? And most women and children had at least five or six Cortes that they cycled throughout the week. No wonder everyone was so poor, I decided superciliously. They wasted their money on looking ridiculous.
A couple of weeks after my arrival, I accompanied Angela, one of the teachers beginning her second year in San Mateo, to the market to buy her fifth Corte. We spent an hour browsing the stalls, before she settled on one whose dominant color was purple. It set her back 350Q. On the way out, she pointed out what looked like identical fabrics which for who knows what reason cost 1000Q, 1500Q. What’s the difference? I asked her. Look. Those colors are brighter, the fabric finer. Mine is more cumbersome, you see?” she explained, rubbing my fingers against the cloth.
“Right,” I uttered and began crunching a passion fruit carcass beneath my boot. The purple Prada priced one on the wall had looked as different from Angie’s Mervyn’s one as a pair of Snickers bars. Confused, I followed my Corte mentor outside, where she stopped in front of a raggedy woman arranging a pile of Cortes on a tarp.
“These are used Cortes.” Angie said, spitting out the word used as if it were a leprous reptile. Those sell for only 50Q.
“What’s the difference?” I asked, because there wasn’t any. They looked like Corte, like Angie’s, like the Prada one, like every other one that gaped at my pale skin and pants.
“They’re used.” She said again. “Look” she insisted, raising a flap of musty smelling fabric in front of my eyes. Mmm. I left wondering contemptuously why women wasted their money paying more for the same damn thing.

10 Febrero—

Hobbling upon my pants shackled legs has begun to make me feel like a deflated puffer fish floundering beneath a school of glistening Cortes. This morning, Angela tried to console me. “Just remember, you’re a premier member of the San Mateo ‘Pants Club’. The joke’s on them.” Groucho Marx once said that he’d never belong to any club who would have him as a member. There must have been thousands of clubs to choose from wherever he was when he said that. Had he been in San Mateo, he would have found it difficult to refuse acceptance into the only club whose member’s wouldn’t sneer at his Gringo face.

I broke down this week and bought a Corte at Sunday Market. It was a vintage one, the kind they sell outdoors beside the dried fish stand. Why? There was something about the crisscross of cotton candy pinks and greens, and besides, it cost me only 60Q, the cost of dinner for two at our town’s poshest restaurant. Even if I never wore it, I reasoned as I returned from the market, I could give it to Grammy to sew it into her quilts. I felt confident about my purchase for a couple of steps, before a hoard of students swarmed in and ripped the bag of fabric out of from under my arm. “Seño, you bought a Corte! How much did it cost?”
Asking the price of a Mateano’s new Corte, hairpins or deodorant is not only is not considered rude, but instead forms the foundation of friendly conversation, much like asking someone how they are doing. One evening, while carrying a Cauliflower home from the market I planned to sauté into a Mayan curry, four separate packs of students asked me how much I had paid for it. “4 Quetzales” I told them aghast, and they looked satisfied and wished me to travel with God on the rest of my path home. But this time, when I told the students, that I had paid 60 Q for my newest fashion addition, the girls all chuckled. “Oh,” they cackled, exploding into a mess of Chuj and picking at the wanton strands of graying pastels. “Oh.”
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Yesterday afternoon, our classes were canceled for the school ‘discoteca’. I was admonished to dress up, meaning to wear Corte. Like a teenager reaching into his father’s liquor cabinet, I pulled my Corte and its conspiring orange flowered faja out of the plastic bag. Where to begin? I struggled a while, feeling like an oversized toddler trying to put on a new jumper before I surrendered. "Angie?" My seasoned roommate came in, and artfully began to pull the twin folds tight in her fists, to cinch the faja so tight around my waste that it shrunk to the size of a little girl’s. Perfect. I attached my dangling amber earrings, lacquered a coat of mascara and stepped out into the fog to wait for the others to finish gelling their hair and tightening the straps of their pleather platforms. As I attempted to breath, I heard the giggles of a pack of female students. They stopped in front of our house “Seño! Look you’re wearing Corte! How much did it cost?” When I told them the price, they kneeled down like forensic investigators to examine the wreckage. “Seño,” a couple of them groaned. “60 Q?” They groaned something in Chuj, and one of the girls darted back up the hill.
“Where is María going?”
The others were too busy denigrating my Corte to respond. Luckily, before I could burst into tears, Maria returned holding a scarlet Corte enveloped in a daunting pouf of frills. The girls rushed me into my room, undressed me, popped a frilly lace poncho over my head and began wrapping the stiff fabric around my pallid legs. “Ah,” they grinned as they tightened my faja, “Now we can go.” As we walked over to the dance, the entire town gaped as if seeing Marilyn Monroe in a Gucci gown. “Ay Seño,” squealed the town, “You are gorgeous!” I didn’t believe them.

I attempted for a couple of hours to hop around in my Corte brace, (no wonder no one in this town could dance!) before rushing home to console the limp toile the girls had strewn on my bed. I couldn’t understand. It looked nice enough to me. With a rancorous scoff, I shoved the Corte into one of my suitcase and refused to ever again waste money on anachronous Mayan garb. If they wanted me to wear Corte, they’d have to dress me up themselves.

20 Abril—Return…

Today’s fable begins with a word,
today—it wriggles free from the morning’s feculence,
darts away,
slides along the collarbone of the moon.

The roosters were on strike at dawn
demanding fatter corn,
and today woke up late.
Its hours rushed into the sunset theater,
under the wing of my pen,
scribbling the yesterday’s
with its antiquated tongues and trousers
Espera! yells the lost hour
gasping beneath the fleeting rain.

Today is no longer a number,
my feet are not tired
nor my back cracked bent over like a swine.
I won’t become the dusk tonight,
tonight, I’ll walk east,
eat oranges before dawn.

Patience, I beseech the sunset,
there is color for the both of us,
share with me a plum,
a wanton kernel,
a crimson peel,
ever you’ll be our boundary
the pasture of our April dream.


Last week, our boss arrived from Virginia to verify that the school was running smoothly. It was, and in celebration, she planned a fiesta at her San Mateo casa for the teachers. Might it be a real party? What to wear? The chalk covered ochre skirt I wear to all of my classes? Suddenly, I had a urge to—I knocked on my Angela’s door, “Um, Angie, could I wear one of your Cortes on Friday?”
“Hmmm,” she whispered, winking at me as if I had just asked her for a condom. “Yes darling, of course.”
That Friday, I donned my Corte to the celebration. For the first time in my four months in San Mateo, I felt beautiful. I shimmied around the room, flirting with the teachers who admired my svelte waist (Cortes are pulled so tight it alters the position of your organs so that your waist remains waif-like and your belly puffs out like a potato chip bag in the cabin of an airplane), and newfound self-assurance.
The next day, I pulled my same pair of pants. How drab and languorous I felt! I dragged myself on a walk in an attempt to cheer up, but as I passed the goddesses who fluttered by me in their ethereal Cortes, I grew ever drearier. I had felt this way in middle school, in those days right after bellbottoms were resurrected and I still wore last season’s baggy corduroys. I wanted a real Corte. One of my own. Forget February’s resolution; forget saving up for a trip to Cuba. I wanted a Corte and I wanted it now.

I revealed my urge to Angela. She grinned. “Buying a Corte is like getting married. You have to wait until you’re ready, and then after a while, it just hits you, and you can’t get the desire out of your mind.” She put her arm around my shoulder. “We’ll go look for one for you at market tomorrow.”

We got a late start, heading over to the center at 6am. After a quick stop for hot-rice drink, we began to look at the hundreds of shimmering and un-shimmering fabrics displayed like cheap paintings against the sullen market stalls. “Take your time,” she insisted, “Date around for a bit. When you find the right one, you’ll know.” I perused the selection of young specimens until the greens, golds and crimsons muddled into a Mayan mess. “Maybe I’m just not ready to get a Corte!” I finally blubbered, as the vendors began to pack up their wares. On our way home, we ran into Magdalena, the home-ec teacher. After she asked us how much our bunch of radishes had cost, she inquired into why we were returning home so late?
“Jen was looking for her first Corte.”
“Did you buy one? How much did it cost?”
“No,” I muttered, “I, I, I don’t know, I like them all but, I just don’t know which one to get, they’re all so pretty and… and…” I looked down at Magdalena’s stunning Corte lined with reds and oranges.”
“Let’s go on Thursday, she said, putting her arm around my tense shoulders, “there’s a new vendor on Thursday’s that comes with Cortes from Quetzaltenango (the Guatemalan equivalent of Milan) for only two hundred. I bought this one there last week.

23 Abril—
How not to love in the time of mangoes?
To behold this slice of sunset,
The morning shadows as they slide beneath its wake.
I’m old enough now to follow the mountain’s spine,
aside the men clutching the limp necks of machetes
the girl plucking the lira’s C,
and the pair of pallid hands clutching a day’s wage in broccoli
wrapped in a swathe of crimson gleam.

But I’m not tired yet--
whisper the mangoes beneath their vinyl skins,
the skins again,
skins cut clean like cats tongues…

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