Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera
La memoria es método de olvidar:
apuntes de Yes, Mrs. Williams. A Personal Record of my Mother
(por William Carlos Williams)Tinta regada
8, 2025
“La realidad es una decisión.” –Jerry Torres-Santiago
“When my father was dead and my mother died, my brother asked me, Where do you want to go? To America? Nooo! To France? Yesss! I never wanted to come here. Never, never….And here I am…probably I will die here. And rot here. brrrr. I hate that. I hate it….Let me rot. Brrr. No. I can’t think of that” (96).
Tropas americanas subiendo la Méndez Vigo. El grito de Lares. El judaísmo. Su familia y los mayagüezanos.
“I knew a colored man who wanted to speak Spanish well so he put an ‘s’ on every word” (121)! Speaking “in their own language” (71), many names: Francisco 46, Enrique 63, Thomasina 59, Anaclito 66, comentario sobre los esclavos 71, pegándolos 76, Ms Hope 69, Tinaco 97, Aurriette 115, Celestae 116, esclavos estudiante español 121, niño enfermo 134, de todas partes de África 108, duermen, abajo en la casa 46.
Y los nombres.
¿Quiénes son estas personas? ¿WCW conocería los nombres y/o sus presencias/fantasmas?
Tamares 64, Alfred Cristi 65, Mr. Gould 68, Ms Hope 69, Gottshalk 33, 45, 137, Lou Payne, Jessie Payne Mr Luce 19, Enriquez 30, Patti 35, Émile Farline, the Farlines 42, Paradis, Don Pepe Paradis 44, Giacomaggi, a Corsican, Guenard & Mangual, “they had a big sugar estate”, restaurant of Mme. Forestier, “lots of German comerciantes” Mr. Krug, Mr. Lemmeyer, Mr. Wiggers. “And an Englishman, Mr. Wise” 44.
Monstantos, Enriquez 53, Alexandro de Castro 58, Melian Hurrard, Soloman Hoheb 60, Kruger, Terecita Turul 61, Margarita Marana, Albertina 72, Mr. Kemp 73, Lightbody 74, Willie Lamb, Cristi, Merle, Lamb 75, Coquelin 76, Marie Pratt 77, Ernestine Keratriz 78, Dr. Preto (St. Thomas), Mr. Gubitosi, Luisa Frascheri 80, Jeanne Farine, César Frank, Juliette Monsano 81, M. Farie 82, Isabel de Hiberga (and 98) 84, Manuel Enriquez, Keratry 84, Calisto 90, Miss McEligot 93, Wellcome 97, Godwin, Irving, Tinaco 98, Toledo, Mr. Kruger 100, Alice Montsanto 101, Mestre 102, Catalanes in Mayagüez, Barclay 103, Maria Luisa Blum, 108.
“Mm. Joinville had a boarding school in Mayagüez” Green, Doss 110, Minot, Schaumloeffel,112, Monet, Higgin Bottom, Walcott, Jimmy Hazel, Borshnek, Demarest, Matthews 114, Givry 114, Mrs Pardon 126, Celestine, Cavalier 130, Jack Lucy 132, Dr Block 134, Longmeyer, Krug (father’s partners) 135, Wrights, Toledos, Hazels, Kruegers, Wingwoods, Hurrards, Montsantos, Gottshalk, 137, Margurite 143, Mr. Badger 119.
“Germans would come and play cards and the tables at the back would be used” (46).
“there was a screened porch to take the cockroaches away. I can remember there were little plates with kerosene so that the ants would not climb in. Then the kitchen” (46).
“There was a steep pair of stairs, quite narrow, and there was the toilet that everybody used. Then going down the stairs, outside, there was a stable with a horse and under the kitchen a place where they had a carriage and the two colored men slept. Far at the back of the yard, there was sugar cane growing” (46).
“My mother [Hurrard] used to play the guitar” (43).
“Today just to pass the time, I was trying to remember all the people that were in Mayagüez” (43).
“They were all foreigners…Merle de Lauris, very fine people. Mr. Merle was a tall man. I remember as a child I used to admire him, like a child, such a fine tall nice-looking man. Miss Merle married some Italian count. I can’t remember his name. I was trying to squeeze my mind.
Paradis, Don Pepe Paradis. He owned an estate. Don Pepe and Isabel. Para Paradis.
La Moutte et sa femme. They had the first school. The Grammar School. Et son fils. I can see a big woman like that, a French woman. Their son used to teach, he used to teach the piano too. …
Giacomaggie, a Corsican, had the high school for boys. For girls, before high school, it was El Señor Castro. He was from Venezuela, and Don Pepe Castro, his wife.
Guernard & Mangual, they had a big sugar estate. Mme. Forestier—I shouldn’t forget her. From the hacienda they had an alameda, an alley of trees, with mangoes on both sides. They used to call it the Restaurant of Mme. Forestier. All the boys and girls used to run there to pick up mangoes.
Lots of German commerciantes, business men. I only remember Mr. Krug, Mr. Lemmeyer and Mr. Wiggers—I don’t know how to say it. And an Englishman, Mr. Wise” (44).
“I’m trying to remember the house. The street was called La Calle de Mendez Vigo. I don’t think there was any number. That was the only street that went to the Plaza. The house had a big parlor, balcony in front toward the street, with two doors, French windows that opened to it. There was almost no from yard” (45).
“By the record in the Cathedral in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, where she was born—Raquel Héléne Rose Hoheb lived to be one hundred and two years old! slightly more. I got it direct from the big book of the Recorder in the Mayor’s office; he copied it out for me: Dec. 24, 1847.
He also uncovered the date of my uncle Carlos’ license to practice surgery—he after whom I myself named, with all the names of the petitioners certifying to his qualifications under it. To my great amusement and surprise I found also the license of my grandmother to drive her private carriage on the streets of the provincial city” (51).
“Beaufils was Spanish. That one married Toto Longueville” (52).
“At home if I had red beans Pop would always say, Donde [sic] están las habichuelas” (53)? (esta frase evidencia que his father, not only his mother, spoke Spanish to WCW en New Jersey.)
“When foreigners write it at first, they some times [sic] forget to put in the little marks. Like the n. And it means something entirely different. Even a little shocking if they want to write año nuevo, new year, and they write ano nuevo—you know what that means?”
“Nunca digas de esta agua no beberas” [no accents] (56).
“The Cristi sugar estate was next to our house” (65).
“Albertina married an Italian…they may be living on Long Island” (72).
“In Mayagüez, where I was born, they were all foreigners: French, English, Germans….The Germans were unmarried and they all lived together in a house which was called “la casa de los Allemanes”… they came to work in the sugar and coffee plantations up in the mountains. Some of the typical names were Christi, Merle, and Lamb. It was cool in the mountains. They even had strawberries” (75).
“Jeanne Farine always used to say: J’ai une fuite dans le dos! (I have a stabbing pain at the back.) I don’t know what she would mean. Poor girl, she’s dead now” (80).
“Isobel de Hiberga, the intimate friend of my mother” (84).
“There used to be a man in Mayagüez, a beggar. I don’t know how it is now that the Americans have come there, but in those days they would allow the beggars to come to town on Fridays” (91).
“Mr. Wellcome was the photographer of Puerto Rico and St. Thomas, he went all over taking pictures” (97).
“When my father was dead and my mother died, my brother asked me, Where do you want to go? To America? Nooo! To France? Yesss! I never wanted to come here. Never, never….And here I am…probably I will die here. And rot here. brrrr. I hate that. I hate it….Let me rot. Brrr. No. I can’t think of that” (96).Miss Prosh 47
“It was an office in which Spanish was the language spoken among the staff. My father spoke Spanish quite as easily as he spoke English; he would never have been employed there otherwise. So that when I was a child Spanish was the language spoken in the household [including WCW] except by Mrs. Wellcome, my father’s mother, who, when there was need of it, employed what was called español de cocina [sic], pig Spanish” (4).
“So that as children my brother and I heard Spanish constantly spoken about [around?] us. A steady flow of West Indians, South Americans, and other speaker of the Spanish language came to visit us, to stay sometimes the entire winter if it so fitted their fancy or the necessity of the case” (4).
“she had once lived … on the Boulevard St. Germain” (4).
“She was no more than an obscure art student from Puerto Rico, slaving away at her trade which she loved with her whole passionate soul, living it, drinking it down with her every breadth [strangely mixed metaphor?]—the money gone, her mother as well as her father dead, she was forced to return…” (5)
“And who is this? said Pop.
Don’t you know me? answered my mother. Lou Payne” (19).
“In her dreams she could see perfectly well” (19).
“When mother and I began to translate The Dog and the Fever, I knew no more of Quevedo than the bawdy reports reputed to him which had come down the two hundred years after his death even to Mayagüez and so on to me.” (21)
“Now, past eighty, the ways she talks is this: When Puerto Rico belonged to the Spanish and the regiments would come—young officers from Andalusia and Castilla—they would take their capes and throw them before her the feet of the girls they admired. Dichosa es la madre que te pario [sin]” (23).
“My grandfather was a business man, you know. He kept the ice house in Mayagüez. They imported the ice. He kept it and sold it.” 102
“It was a man named Krug. I suppose he may have been my father’s partner—anyhow, he was his best friend” (102).
“He [Mestre] was a Catalan—they can’t say Pepe” (103).
“To tell you the truth I could have stayed in there (in France), but I was afraid of the father of those two girls—fooling around. I was afraid of him” (106).
1928: “I can remember—that makes me think of it—how the boys would go in the streets selling ice cream, with the freezer carried on their shoulder—Elado de mentechado, elado de pina. En la variation esta el gusto! That’s what they would say. That is why I do not like to think of going back. All those things would be lost” (107).
“We must have been very young. We would go to the river to bathe, early in the morning. There we would jump around in the water naked. I remember there were yucca leaves, big leaves growing in the water” (108).
“the colored people would come into the town [on New Year’s Day] from the estates—from all parts of Africa I suppose they were—and they would dance” (108).
“There was another, a silly looking fellow in a long shirt to his knees, who went shuffling along looking over his shoulder with a sly grin; then when he would see many women together he would flip up his shirt front at them and snap it down again and shuffle along with a ridiculous leer” (109).
Mme. [Adelaide] de Joinville had a boarding school in Mayagüez” (110).
“This is the sister of the greatest doctor in Puerto Rico” (115).
“[They] learned nothing of America, but Puerto Rico, a foreign island in a tropical sea” (voice of WCW 116).
“There is a kind of orange in Puerto Rico that I have never seen here….It is half orange, half grapefruit, sort of bitter sweet. …They call it torongha” (119).
Tuberculosis 111
“Did you ever live in St. Thomas? (wcw)
No, but I used to go there with my mother…. We would stay about fifteen days with her friend, Mrs. Pardo” (126).
“At Mayagüez, oh many years ago! they would come at eight o’clock in the morning and yell, Pan de la machina, caliente! Pan de la machina, caliente! hot bread for breakfast” (128).
“I always thought whatever country you were born in, that’s what you were. If you were born in France you were a Frenchman, if you were born in Germany you were a German and like that. But I remember once, I think it was a peddler and I asked him what nationality he was and he said a Jew. I was so surprised. I thought it didn’t make any difference what religion you were or from what country. … the universe may say, they are a Jew, that’s all, it settles it” (129).
“From there he went to Mayagüez in partnership with Langmeyer and Krug. They were, I suppose, what you call merchants. They would buy a whole cargo ship coming from Europe and sell it” (135).
“My brother wanted to send me away. He asked if I wanted to go to the United States or to France. I told him, France” (135)!
“The girl admired Sol Hoheb and—I suppose they learned each others [sic] languages fast enough” (136).
“[A “Mexican Indian” woman] goes to church every Sunday. Pero no entiendes lo que dice el cure. [ß palabras de WCW] I asked her if she understood what the preacher was saying. I knew she didn’t.”(143).
[Estas son las únicas frases, que yo sepa, en que WCW reconoce públicamente que habla español. Aparecen en la última página de este libro.]“Like a love song written to a place,” Dirty old Town. Luke Kelly & The Dubliners.
