1

Unlike the other three poets discussed in this book, who were born and socialized in the United States, Lucha Corpi's socialization as a woman took place in Mexico. In 1965, a short time after her marriage in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, Corpi emigrated with her husband to the San Francisco Bay area.^[1] Five years later she and her husband were divorced, a difficult and painful experience. Her son Arturo was born in Oakland, California, where they have lived ever since. Lucha Corpi obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's in comparative literature from San Francisco State University. She has served on the board of Aztlán Cultural, a Chicano organization. In 1970–71 she was vice-chairwoman of the Chicano Studies Executive Committee, and from 1970 to 1972 she served as coordinator of the Chicano Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in Chicano journals, such as Fuego de Aztlán , published in Berkeley, and De Colores , published by Pajarito Publications in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Chicano poet Tino Villanueva selected a few of her poems for Chicanos , an anthology compiled in Spanish and published in Mexico. Corpi has taught English as a second language in the Oakland Adult Education program since 1973.

The emigration and the divorce, two central events in Corpi's

life, ruptured to some extent her identification with the values that define the status of women in Mexico. Life in the United States led her to question her culture's definition of woman as man's property, with little or no freedom to choose her own feminine and sexual destiny. Although United States culture inspired her to seek freedom from the constraints on women's sexual expression in Mexico, Corpi could not fully embrace the options open to women in the United States, such as the possibility of remarriage after divorce or sex without marriage. Neither could she return to her country of origin, for there she would bear the stigma of having transgressed two taboos of her culture: she would be perceived by her family and her society as a woman who had abandoned her country and who had been abandoned by her husband.

Given these circumstances, Corpi chose to identify herself as a Chicana. As noted above, she became involved in a Chicano community. Another indication of her Chicana identity is the publication by Fuego de Aztlán of a bilingual edition of her collection of poems, Palabras de Mediodía / Noon Words , in 1980.^[2] Furthermore, she has presented readings of her poetry to audiences composed of Anglos as well as Chicanos in various places in the Southwest. In 1982 Corpi was one of the key speakers at the Tenth Annual National Association of Chicano Studies Conference in Tempe, Arizona. She has thus been accepted by the poetic circles of the Chicano community with which she has chosen to associate.

Written in Spanish and translated into English by Corpi's friend, Catherine Rodríguez-Nieto, the poems of Palabras de Mediodía are indirect expressions of the conflicts that followed from Corpi's ambivalence about crossing the boundaries between Anglo-American and Mexican cultures. Although the poems do not overtly manifest those conflicts, they are nonetheless shaped and influenced by specific biographical and cultural pressures. Corpi's poetry also reflects her life in a modern culture that permits women to express themselves in writing. It is noteworthy that she did not write until she began living in the Chicano community. Although living, writing, and publishing in the United States, socially and culturally Corpi remains a Mexican woman in her poetry, where she orders relationships between men and women according to traditional Mexican values. Her decision to identify herself as a Chicana in the United States

manifests her desire to fuse two distinct cultural experiences, which in a sense she both accepts and rejects.

In Palabras de Mediodía , Corpi makes a conscious attempt to dramatize a woman's search for passionate love free of the constraints placed on female sexual desires in her culture. One rule of sexual behavior prescribed by traditional Mexican culture is that a woman must be a virgin and must find sexual fulfillment in marriage. Corpi's poetic world, then, is conditioned by the tension between a woman's desire for passionate love and the restrictions that limit her freedom to choose her sexual future. Ironically, the same conflict is embodied in her name: the word lucha means "struggle" and corpi ("corpus," "corps") suggests "body"; hence "the struggle of the body" (la lucha del cuerpo ). Corpi's poetic works imply that sexual gratification is a model against which to judge the fulfillment of a human being; yet they contain no overt references to sexual activity. Instead, Corpi's poems allude to sexual activity by means of the erotic codes and conventions of a Mexican romantic, lyrical tradition. For example, the image of a seed fertilized by the sun and rain suggests the insemination of the ovum by the sperm; the cutting (cortar ) of a fruit or a flower from the vine suggests the action of a man possessing a woman.^[3] Read from the perspective of a modern culture with fewer sexual restrictions on women, Corpi's erotic passages seem to manifest an unconsciously sublimated or displaced desire. In her poetry the object longed for but never defined in explicit terms is a sublimated wish for sexual gratification. Paradoxically, these erotic codes and conventions derive from a literary tradition whose values imply the very constraints on women which Corpi would like to eradicate.

In Corpi's poetry the expressive features of language are more prominent than the communicative features. Her poems progress by way of images that evoke meaning rather than by statements that make logical connections. The lyrical metaphors that imply sexual activity, the rhetorical arguments that suggest a tragic mood instead of addressing the heart of the problem, and the use of ellipses imbue her poetry with a dimension of "silence," as she attempts to inject a female emotional consciousness into a male literary tradition that has not permitted women to speak.

Yet the unconscious fantasy of Corpi's poetic persona in Palabras de Mediodía is a dream impossible to realize. In the United States she cannot transform herself into a new and liber-

ated woman without surrendering the values that defined, and repressed, a woman in Mexico. I see her pulling between the two opposing pressures of a desire for sexual liberation and a knowledge of cultural prohibition on several levels. In the first part of this chapter I analyze Corpi's autobiographical and allegorical short story, "Tres Mujeres,"^[4] in order to establish the cultural constraints imposed upon her as a Mexican woman, constraints primarily related to issues of nationality and gender. In the second part of the chapter I elucidate the pervasive imaginative structure of Corpi's poetic universe through a discussion of poems in various categories. In a set of landscape poems Corpi reflects upon her childhood and adolescence in Mexico in order to show that her poetic universe is split between a desire for sexual experience (rebellion, expression) and a knowledge of prohibition (repression, silence). Next I address the poems that talk about the prohibition, the frustrated desire of the poetic persona, and show how unrealized desire leads to sublimation. The next category comprises poems that enact the process of sublimation. They are important because they reveal Corpi's identification with the erotic codes and conventions of a romantic and lyrical tradition. The last group of poems reveal traces of Corpi's attempt to challenge the social laws of her culture which limit women's freedom to choose for themselves. My analysis of them shows that the erotic codes and conventions through which Corpi sublimates her desire for sexual liberation are the same as those that reinforce the values of the society that represses women's freedom. This contradiction mitigates and diffuses her criticism of that society.

"Tres Mujeres" / "Three Women"

"Tres Mujeres," Lucha Corpi's first attempt at writing, appeared in La Cosecha , a special edition of De Colores devoted to creative expression by Chicanas. Written in 1970 and published in 1977, approximately three years before Corpi's poetry appeared, the story is significant because it addresses the lacunae that characterize her poetry. "Tres Mujeres" is a direct revelation of what can only be inferred from the poetry: Corpi's inability to embrace

fully either the culture she had known in Mexico or the culture she had to live within the United States.

The bridge (el puente ) is a recurrent image in Palabras de Mediodía . One one level this bridge is, of course, the historical border between Mexico and the United States which Corpi crossed with her husband in 1965. Her description of the crossing in "Tres Mujeres" suggests that the couple entered the United States with proper documentation and left Mexico because the husband, dissatisfied with life there, sought better economic and educational opportunities. Symbolically, he looks beyond the bridge: "El veía hacia adelante, hacia aquella cuidad . . . más allá del puente" (p. 81). ("He looked ahead, toward that city . . . beyond the bridge.") Corpi's protagonist and double, Juana María, on the other hand, is not so eager to leave her native land: "Ella volteaba hacia . . . atrás . . . y silenciosamente dos gotas de despedida rodaban y caían" (p. 81). ("She looked . . . back . . . and, silently, two teardrops rolled down and fell.") On a higher level the bridge is a metaphorical border between two identities: Corpi's already internalized identity in Mexico and the new identity she once sought in the United States. Her ambivalent attitude toward both countries forced her to live, whether in the United States or in Mexico, always on the bridge, always in a space between. As a work dramatizing Corpi's dilemma, "Tres Mujeres" clarifies her relationship to the two cultures.

In "Tres Mujeres" Juana María must decide between the two histories she perceives are available to her: "pertenezco a la historia ya escrita y a la que vendrá" (p. 75). ("I belong to a history already written as well as to one yet to be written.") Juana María sees a clearly defined past and looks to an imprecise future. Corpi's technique of creating an ambiguous geographical location helps to dramatize a liminal space, in both a temporal and a spatial dimension. Like most traditional allegories, "Tres Mujeres" is based on the convention of a journey. Juana María is a traveler in search of her destiny. On the advice of her grandmother, she follows the flow of a river that leads to a house where the three women of the title await her. Although the river and the house are never precisely located in either Mexico or the United States, the description specifies that the river divides the territory into two sections ("el río . . . divide en dos las tierras morenas") and that the northern part of the river is preferred by

the birds that are searching for food. In the context of the story, a river dividing a northern land from a southern land suggests Mexico and the United States, and yet the two lands are "tierras morenas" ("brown lands").

Corpi enhances the illusion of a border location by introducing objects and people connected with both countries. For example, the house the granddaughter is to find is associated with her future destiny. When Juana María arrives at the house, she is surprised to meet Daniel, a character we later learn is her son: "¿Qúe hace él aquí? Con seguridad se le escapó a la abuela y me siguío" (p. 75). ("What is he doing here? For certain he snuck out on his grandmother and followed me.") Corpi's account of the border crossing by Juana María and her husband suggests that Daniel was born in the United States, for he did not participate in the emigration. By juxtaposing an ancestral Mexican grandmother and a great-grandson whose life is linked to the United States, Corpi mixes past and present, life in Mexico with life in the United States.

A second example concerns Rosa Catalina, who welcomes Juana María before her meeting with the three women. Rosa Catalina reminds the protagonist of the circumstances of their initial meeting (p. 76):

—Como le iba diciendo, nos conocimos hace mucho tiempo.
Quizá recuerde a aquel estudiante, Juan Ramón
Gómez, que mató a otro campañero de escuela con una
navaja por accidente. Era mi hijo. A pesar de los
esfuerzos de usted y de otros de sus compañeros el juez lo
condenó a prisión perpetua.

—As I was saying, we met long ago. Perhaps you'll remember
that student, Juan Ramón Gómez, who accidentally killed
another boy in school with a knife. He was my son. In
spite of your efforts and those of his friends, the judge
sentenced him to life in prison.

This passage describes a familiar event in working-class Chicano barrios in the United States. It helps to create cultural ambiguity because it suggests a character who in the past knew life in the United States and who is presently on a journey that seems to be taking place in Mexico. This temporal and spatial ambiguity underscores Juana María's state of mind: Is she here or there? Is she in the past or the present?

On entering the house Juana María confronts the two histories defining the extremities of her existence. They are embodied in the allegorical figures of Guadalupe for Mexico and Amerina for the United States. The third woman is Justina, a double image of the woman Juana María now is and the woman she seeks to become. While Guadalupe urges Juana María to return to her original homeland, Amerina tries to persuade her to settle in the United States. Justina, on the other hand, simply tells Juana María that she will have to decide for herself.

Guadalupe embodies the ideal of the mujer sufrida ,^[5] the long-suffering Mexican woman who fulfills herself by sacrificing for others, usually men. As the story makes clear that Juana María has already left Mexico, Guadalupe may be seen as the fulfillment of the woman she might have been had she never left Mexico: "Soy consuelo del que sufre y anhelo del que ama; la columna íntegra en donde descansa la familia. . . . Regresa a mí, hija" (p. 81). ("I am the solace of he who suffers and the desire of he who loves; the pillar where the family rests. . . . Return to me, daughter.") Guadalupe awakens within Juana María feelings of guilt about leaving Mexico as well as nostalgia for the security of her former way of life: "a ese regazo tibio de donde quizá nunca debería haber salido . . . volver a ser . . . la joven que sabía su lugar y desempeñaba su papel entre su gente" (p. 82). ("to that warm breast that I, perhaps, should never have left . . . to be once again . . . the young girl who knew her place and performed her role among her people.") Although Juana María would like to accept the identity offered by Guadalupe ("Hubiera querido regresar a Guadalupe"), she knows it is impossible: "ya no soy ésa de entonces. . . . No puedo dejar de llorar" (ibid.). ("I am no longer the one I was then. . . . I cannot stop crying.")

Her Mexican dream now dead, Juana María looks to Amerina: "Amerina se levanta y desde su pedestal me mira poderosa" (ibid.). ("Amerina gets up and from her pedestal, looking powerful; she sees me.") Although Juana María notes how different she and Amerina are, "Somos tan extrañas la una a la otra" (ibid.), she recognizes that Amerina offers her the opportunity not only to question the life of self-effacement that Guadalupe represents but also to choose her own destiny: "Lo que yo te ofrezco es una vida rica y libre; eso no es lo que tenías antes. Siempre has vivido por o para alguien más. Nunca para tí misma" (p. 83). ("What I offer you is a rich and free life that you did not have before. You have

always lived through or for someone else. Never for yourself.") Juana María accepts this criticism: "Cuanto de cierto hay en sus palabras. No puedo desmentirla" (ibid.). ("How true are her words. I cannot deny them.") The tête-a-tête with Amerina discloses that Juana María's ambivalence about accepting the United States as her new cultural homeland is rooted in reasons that are as much sociopolitical as sexual. Confessing to having once believed in Amerina's promise of liberty and equality (p. 82), "He aquí mi tesoro—el poder, la igualdad, la felicidad, la libertad" ("Here is my treasure—power, equality, happiness, and liberty"), Juana María now knows it to be mere empty words (p. 83):

Su oferta atrae, pero he visto la mirada demudada
en algunos de sus hijos prendidos siempre a la
esperanza de algún día poder alcanzar esa
libertad y felicidad. Sólo los escogidos pueden
disfrutar de ello. Aquellos encerrados en cortezas
encaneladas, ojos cubiertos por el polvo de sus
tierras, esos se requiebran sobre la tierra y la
humedecen con sus gotas salinas hasta que la sangre
se les agolpa en los corazones y surge violenta como
torbellino. Ellos no son los escogidos. Desde su
pedestal Amerina los mira y sonríe. Esa poderosa
visión, seductora; lo ofrece todo pero lo absorbe todo.

Her offer attracts me, but I have seen the distraught
look in some of her children, always hoping for the
day when they can have liberty and happiness. Only
the chosen can enjoy the dream. Those who are imprisoned
in dark skins and whose eyes are covered by the dust of
her lands break their backs on it, wetting it with their
salty sweat until their blood beats in their hearts and
surges violently like a whirlwind. They are not among
the chosen. From her pedestal Amerina sees them and
smiles. Her powerful vision is seductive; she offers
everything but she absorbs everything she offers.

Corpi, aware of a Latino community's situation in the United States, fears that by accepting the United States she too would be considered among those "encerrados en cortezas encaneladas."

Juana María also has personal and dramatic reasons for finding fault with Amerina. Ironically, she reaches the epitome of happiness with her husband in the United States: "Era marzo y ya no llovía. Y lo anaranjado de los ocasos de invierno iba dejando paso al dorado. El sol brillaba con una intensidad mágica.

Eramos felices" (pp. 82–83). ("It was March and it didn't rain anymore. The orange of winter sunsets was becoming a golden color. The sun shone with a magical intensity. We were happy.") Juana María believes she can realize her dream of fulfilling herself as a woman in the United States: "Amerina me dejó jugar con la esperanza" (p. 83). ("Amerina let me play with hope.") The rupture of the marriage brought disappointment. Juana María questions to Amerina suggest that she blames her for the unwanted divorce, possible in the United States and far more unlikely in Mexico: "¿Quién entonces se llevó el fuego? ¿Quién sacudió las flores del cerezo antes de tiempo y lo dejó todo desnud? ¿Quién se bebió toda su savia? Y ahora en medio del campo yermo sus ramas desnudas gritan y nadie escucha" (ibid.). ("Who then took the fire? Who shook the flowers from the cherry tree before its time and left it naked? Who drank its sap? And now in the midst of a dry field its naked branches shout and no one hears.") In this extended metaphor the fire is the passion of the marriage, the tree is Mexican tradition, and the flower is the woman. Juana María's point is that by making the divorce possible, the United States took from the Mexican tradition its romance and passion before she could fully realize her dream.

The more reticent Justina simply points to a gruta ("grotto") that Juana María must enter: "En esa gruta . . . hay un camino escondido. Búscalo" (p. 86). ("In that grotto . . . there is a hidden road. Find it.") In the end the woman enters the gruta , which I take to be Corpi's symbolic representation of her acceptance of an uncertain future. Left without external models of authority and faced with her own breakdown, Corpi presents through Justina the identity she seeks but cannot as yet obtain. She is still the empty space between the rejected alternatives of Guadalupe and Amerina.

The images associated with each woman help to highlight the protagonist's ambivalence toward the two cultures. Each woman is linked with a specific color. Guadalupe has black eyes and hair, dresses in black, and sits on a black bench. The blue-eyed, blond Amerina dresses in white and sits on a white bench. Between the two extremes of a "black" Guadalupe and a "white" Amerina is the "gray" Justina: "Justina es una mujer triste" (p. 75). ("Justina is a sad woman.") The color gray in Corpi's poetry means sadness, absence, and silence.

The details about Guadalupe suggest that she stands for the

historical succession of three cultures: pre-Columbian, European, and Mexican. Juana María remembers Guadalupe when she dressed in white and when (p. 75) "un guerrero velaba su historia. Era la princesa que dormía en el volcán" ("a warrior guarded her story. She was the princess who slept in the volcano"). This description presupposes the popular Mexican legend about a pre-Columbian woman, Iztaccíhuatl (íztac means "white"; cíhuatl means "woman"),^[6] whose name also identifies one of Mexico's highest volcanoes. Woman and mountain are thus locked together as one in the Mexican popular imagination. Iztaccíhuatl is a sleeping princess because the outline of her reclining body is, even today, imaginatively traced in the physical form of the mountain. The warrior guarding her, according to the legend, is Popocatépetl (popoca means "smoked"; tépetl means "mountain"), the name of another volcano situated beside Iztaccíhuatl. Juana María next recalls: "Después su imagen resurgió vestida de azul y con rosas en las manos" (p. 75). ("Later, her image was reborn, dressed in blue and with roses in her hands.") The princess in this context is the European Virgin Mary introduced into Mexico by the Spaniards. The Mexican context, which synthesizes the two images, is suggested by the name "Guadalupe." Indigenous to the Americas and typically Mexican, this name invokes the legend of the Virgen de Guadalupe who appeared at Tepeyac to Juan Diego, a young Indian, and thus fuses pre-Columbian and Catholic elements. The context in which Guadalupe is presented also includes the legendary and phantasmic figure of the Wailing Woman, who searches by night for her lost children. Commonly known in Mexico and the Southwest as La Llorona, the Wailing Woman may also represent the fusion of Aztec and Spanish elements in Mexican culture. Her origin may date back to pre-Columbian times.^[7] Certainly her legend has existed since the time of the Spaniards and is still alive today in Mexico and the Southwest. Juana María associates with Guadalupe some verses that her grandmother taught her as a child, which connect the name with the figure of the mourning mother (p. 80):

¿Guadalupe, Guadalupe
A dónde vas?
—Voy a buscar a mis hijos
Los que dejé en el lugar

Donde el río arrulla a las garzas
En su camino hacia el mar (p. 80).

Guadalupe, Guadalupe
Where are you going?
—I am going to search for my children
whom I left there
where the river lulls the herons
on their way to the sea.

The three cultures—pre-Columbian, Spanish, and Mexican—represented in the name Guadalupe highlight the various transformations of a woman as symbol of purity, virginity, and motherhood from one cultural context to another.

Guadalupe's farewell gesture is to offer Juana María a ring (una sortija ): "Tómala, Juana María, llévala siempre contigo" (p. 82). Juana María finally envisions Guadalupe as the sleeping princess: "La princesa viste de blanco una vez más: su imagen se pierde entre las cimas nevadas de dos gigantes" (ibid.). ("The princess dresses in white once again: her image is lost between the snowy peaks of two giants.") This vision of Guadalupe refers back to the pre-Columbian context or Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl. It also implies, albeit indirectly, the male as a warrior. Together these images—"princess," "white dress," "warrior"—conjure up a scene of innocence, chivalry, and romance. Because the pre-Columbian period predates the European and Mexican periods embodied in the figure of Guadalupe, these images also suggest nostalgia for a former, and supposedly a purer, existence. The portrayal of pre-Columbian culture in mythic terms as an uncontaminated stage of Mexican history before the Spaniards introduced corruption has been a literary convention in both Mexican and Chicano literatures.^[8] In Corpi's story these images and their connotations, along with that of the ring as a traditional symbol of marriage, suggest Juana María's attraction to the idea of being wedded once again to a romantic image of womanhood. That is, she would like to be the woman she once was ("una vez más") before becoming the woman she now is. Implied is a desire to return to an uncontaminated condition, a desire operative on the levels of both gender and nationality: to be a virgin and an authentic Mexican woman.

The imagery surrounding Amerina relates to a different culture. Juana María imagines Amerina as a Helen of Troy with

crystalline eyes and golden hair: "la poderosa razón por la que los hombres mataron sin titubeos" (p. 75). ("The powerful reason why men killed without vacillation.") She is also the Statue of Liberty: "Flor de Mayo, el velero que surcó los mares y la depositó [Helena de Troya], antorcha en mano, en las playas solitarias de una costa brava. Amerina orgullosa y seductora en su pedestal promete sin intención de dar" (ibid.). ("The Mayflower, the ship that plied the seas and placed her [Helen of Troy], torch in hand, on the solitary beaches of a brave coast. Proud, seductive Amerina, who on her pedestal promises with no intention of giving.") The use of the word seductora within a context of liberty may suggest that Corpi was attracted by the image of a woman radically opposed to the feminine ideal of her own culture. Whereas Corpi's Guadalupe is a woman who realizes herself by sacrificing for others, her Amerina, linked with a mythic Helen of Troy, is a woman who fulfills her desires at any cost.

Although associated in the above passage with the seas of Europe and North America, "Amerina" suggests another name and another context. Similar in sound in Spanish to Amerina is Marina , meaning "sea." Thus the name "Marina" suggests the ocean crossed by Cortés to reach the New World where he met the Indian woman, Malintzin Tenépal, whom the Spaniards renamed Doña Marina. She is now pejoratively called La Malinche by Mexicans for her participation with the Spanish in the conquest.^[9] As the woman who favored the foreigner and betrayed her people, Marina became a cultural symbol of treachery. Lucha Corpi has strong objective reasons for identifying with Marina, and that she does so is evident in the four poems in which she purportedly speaks for Marina. The similarity in sound between Amerina and Marina in "Tres Mujeres" suggests that Corpi may see in her allegorical figure of Amerina some trace of Marina, of the woman who, according to the myth, abandoned her people. Amerina-Marina may represent the potential threat of giving up one's original culture to assume a foreign identity.

The "gray" Justina is less clearly drawn than the other two women. The protagonist cannot see her face: "no puedo verle la cara." Her voice is like the murmur of an autumn rain: "como cuando hay que vivir días de callada existencia" (p. 75). ("as when one has to live days of quiet existence.") Justina radiates no sense of history; no cultural associations surround her as they do Guadalupe and Amerina. As her name suggests, she is an abstrac-

tion—the justice and the balance that the protagonist seeks. Justina is both Guadalupe and Amerina without being either one: "Justina se aleja de mí, una ráfaga de aire la envuelve. Gira alrededor de sí misma y al encontrarme con su cara es Guadalupe; una vez más y es Amerina" (p. 86). ("Justina distances herself from me, a gust of wind surrounds her. She swirls around and on seeing her face she is Guadalupe; another swirl and she is Amerina.") Compared with the other two women, who make long speeches to Juana María, Justina hardly speaks. She and Juana María communicate, instead, by way of gestures and sensations (p. 84):

Justina me da su mano y salimos a un patio
interior. . . . Pone su otra mano en mis cabellos y
los acaricia. Y poco a poco recorre con ella toda mi cara.
La detiene en mis ojos, en mi nariz, en la boca. Y la
regresa hasta mi sien y ahí la deja.

Justina gives me her hand and we go out to an interior
patio. . . . She puts her other hand in my hair and caresses
it. Little by little she touches my entire face. She holds her
hand on my eyes, my nose, my mouth. She returns it to my
forehead where it remains.

With Justina's hand on her head and as though in a mystical trance, Juana María sees a transfigured Justina (pp. 84–85):

Sus ojos que antes carecían de color se transforman en color
de miel ante mi incrédula mirada. Cae el manto que cubre
su cabeza y sus cabellos se descrubren de color jengibre
obscuro. Toda ella resplandece con una hermosura
insuperable.

Her eyes once lacking color are transformed to the color of
honey before my unbelieving eyes. The cloak that covered
her head falls and her hair is a dark ginger color. Her
beauty is unsurpassable.

In a vision that foreshadows the story's ending, Juana María sees an immense grotto (una gruta inmensa ) open in front of her. From the grotto she hears music and a child's voice reciting verses of poetry. The child in the cave represents the rebirth of a new identity that Juana María must now confront.

Without actually saying so, Corpi suggests that Juana María's new identity is to be a blend of the two alternative cultures she

knows but cannot fully embrace. To understand the significance of the imagery, which suggests a blend of the United States and Mexico, it is necessary first to summarize Juana María's discussion with her grandmother in Mexico before her marriage and subsequent departure. The story's events move forward in a linear pattern interspersed with a series of flashbacks. The story traces Juana María's arrival at the house, her conversation with the three women, and the ensuing events. The flashbacks proceed from the earliest to the most recent events in the heroine's past: the heroine's conversation with her grandmother, the border crossing, and conversations between Juana María and her husband in the United States. The grandmother appears in both the ongoing story line and in the first flashback.

From the dialogue recounted in the first flashback, the grandmother clearly recognizes that the norms of Mexican society give the man final authority in marriage. Her own experience has led her to conclude that for a woman marriage is a prison. Given these circumstances, the grandmother advises Juana María never to marry. Although marriage will provide her with the illusion that her husband and children are hers, in truth she will be alone. In accepting marriage Juana María would accept the role designed for the woman, the role of living completely for her husband. If the marriage succeeds, she may find happiness. If not, she will be forced to break with the role and make her life alone: "Pero recuerda que una vez que des un paso fuera de ese camino, tendrás que seguir adelante y no es facil" (p. 77). ("But remember that once you set foot outside this path, you will have to go on and it won't be easy.") Instead of marrying, the grandmother counsels, Juana María should live with her lover.

In having her propose this option, Corpi presents the grandmother as a character who knows that her granddaughter's life will be different from her own. The prescient grandmother already sees Juana María odyssey beginning. She believes that Juana María will preserve her freedom of choice by living with her lover. That way she will keep her self-autonomy and her lover will remember her as the woman who offered him freedom. The grandmother states the ancestral taboos that Juana María will in due time break: "Casarse es malo; pero casarse e irse lejos de su patria de uno es sacrilegio. No te cases, Juana María, no te cases" (p. 77). ("To marry is bad but to marry and go far away from one's country is sacrilege. Don't marry, Juana María, don't marry.")

Juana María's answer to this advice assures her grandmother that her marriage will be a satisfying one. To Juana María's "Adiós Abuela," the grandmother responds: "No adiós, Juana María, nos volveremos a ver. Adiós se dice sólo cuando ya no hay remedio" (p. 77). ("No, not farewell, Juana María, we'll see each other again. Farewell is said only when there is no more hope.")

In the forward-moving plot the grandmother arrives at the house before the heroine does and leaves with Justina a gift for her granddaughter. The gift is a paliacate rojo ("red handkerchief"). Juana María opens the handkerchief and finds a chain and a medallion (p. 86):

En él [el medallón] un sol y tres caminos que
convergen en uno hacia una gruta. La figura de
una niña triste y pensativa en espera a la entrada
En la mano izquierda una pluma de águila y en la
derecha una ramita de albahaca. En el borde del
pañuelo hay cinco letras grabadas: ADIOS.

On the medallion one sun and three roads converging
into one leading to a grotto. The image of a sad
and pensive little girl waiting at the entrance.
In her left hand a feather of an eagle and in her
right a small branch of basil. Five letters are
engraved on the border of the handkerchief: ADIOS.

The three roads leading into the grotto seem to represent the three women who reflect the choices open to the heroine. The grotto represents the convergence of these identities, or the point at which the protagonist can no longer postpone a decision. She is, therefore, sad and pensive because she faces the unknown and must decide. The eagle's feather in her left hand evokes simultaneously the United States and Mexico, as both countries use the eagle as a symbol. According to an ancient myth, the Aztecs were told by their gods that they would find Mexico-Tenochtitlán, their city, where they would see an eagle spreading its wings upon a cactus and devouring a serpent.^[10] The image of the pluma (meaning both "feather" and "pen") may be seen as an integrating symbol, standing for the writing the woman will do in the United States which will reflect her life in Mexico. The little branch of basil in the girl's right hand represents a plant historically acclimated to Mexican soil and used traditionally by Mexican people as a seasoning in popular dishes. Thus it may be

thought of as prefiguring the presence of Mexican traditions and customs in Corpi's poetry. The separation of the two—the pen (for writing) in the left hand and the basil (for tradition) in the right hand—foreshadows the fragmentation of the self in Corpi's writing. The edges (el borde ) of the handkerchief are emblematic of the boundary between her past life in Mexico and her future life in the United States. It must be remembered that Corpi, in choosing to live in the United States, moved into a community whose linguistic resources allow el borde to designate not only the edges of something (in this instance a handkerchief) but also the international border between the United States and Mexico. In the Southwest, owing to the influence of the English language, el borde is "the border." The grandmother's ADIOS engraved on el borde (the edges) is synonymous in this context with el borde (the border), because, in the grandmother's view, once Juana María crosses the international boundary all hope of returning is lost: "Adiós se dice sólo cuando ya no hay esperanza."

The woman's entrance into the grotto marks the end of the story. From the beginning the woman has feared the arrival of what she refers to la bestia nocturna : "Prefiero . . . que nunca llegue la hora de la bestia nocturna" (p. 74). ("I prefer that the hour of the nocturnal beast never arrive.") The nocturnal beast may represent a variety of states: silence, darkness, physical or spiritual decay. Essentially, it represents the paradoxical notion of "the core of a void" to which the protagonist feels herself condemned. The hour of the nocturnal beast arrives when Juana María enters the grotto. When associated with the contours and the shape of a grotto, the image of the bestia nocturna suggests that Juana María is entering the "belly of the beast," an action that satisfies physical hunger but nothing else: "La bestia nocturna mata para saciar el hambre, nada más" (p. 88). ("The nocturnal beast kills to satisfy hunger, nothing else.") The "belly of the beast," especially when associated with a Latin American, is a symbolic reference to the United States^[11] and has both spiritual and political implications.

The word "grotto," however, also connotes "shrine," for the Catholic Virgin often appeared in a cave. The image of "shrine" is congruent with the historical context of Guadalupe as virgin and mother. The image of gruta in a Mexican context suggests such notions as mother, virgin, and womb. In entering the gruta , Juana María accepts her confrontation with the void that may

lead to new life. The tripartite image of mother, virgin, and womb is appropriate to Juana María. First, she affirms her role as mother to her son Daniel, who accompanies her into the grotto: "Nos detenemos a la entrada de la gruta. Daniel me da su mano. Le doy la mía" (p. 89). ("We wait at the grotto's entrance. Daniel gives me his hand. I give him mine.") Second, Juana María is symbolically virgin because she searches for a new identity. Third, the grotto serves as a symbolic womb from which a new life will evolve. These mixed impulses of desire and terror associated with the grotto or cavern image reveal Juana María's ambivalence about forging a new identity in a foreign territory that historically is hostile to Mexican people. The story ends with the single word, Entramos ("We enter").

With these details in mind, we can better understand the biographical and cultural constraints that made it impossible for Juana María/Lucha Corpi either fully to accept or reject an identity as a Mexican or an Anglo-American woman. "Tres Mujeres" dramatizes the moment between past and present, between Mexico and the United States. In that historical moment Corpi found herself living in the United States after her separation and divorce. In actuality she could not return to Mexico, because she would bear the double stigma of divorce and emigration, the first bringing more social ostracism to a woman than the second. Another constraint was imposed by the birth of her son, for a return to Mexico would mean separating father and son. "Tres Mujeres" makes it clear that the husband, who appears in flashback, was committed to his decision to live in the United States. Furthermore, the grandmother's advice to Juana María to remain in Mexico suggests that Corpi felt guilty about leaving her homeland and therefore would want to spare her son the same kind of suffering. These biographical details help to explain why Corpi would prefer the United States.

Nevertheless, Corpi, though choosing to live in the United States, could not fully accept Anglo-American culture. Attracted by the identities of both Guadalupe and Amerina but unable to embrace either one, her only option is to accept Justina as her model. The character of Justina gives Corpi the opportunity to blend what she retains of her own Mexican culture with what she gains from her experience in the United States, that is, to blend the ideals of womanhood instilled by her own culture with the desire inspired by United States society for freedom from the

old cultural restrictions. The blending is implied in Corpi's conscious decision to identify herself as a Chicana. "Tres Mujeres" reveals her alienation from both the Mexican and Anglo worlds while at the same time indicating her attraction to both. The poems in palabras de Mediodía make clear her wish to integrate the twin desires: to enjoy sexual gratification and to choose her own sexual destiny. Yet, as analysis of the poetry reveals, Corpi's adherence to the erotic codes and conventions of a literary tradition denying women sexual freedom prevents her from fully achieving the smooth integration of her desires.