Gringa (6 page)

Kermit had a part-time job as a mechanic's apprentice and a girlfriend two years older who worked at a bank. I was a junior in high school. I slept on a cot between the living-room sofa and the wall, my mother slept on the sofa, and my brother in the bedroom of the house. Sometimes when it wasn't too hot or too cold I slept in the old trailer, parked in back. I liked to lie out there and think I was in space, like a pale far-flung planet. The year went by and school remained remote. I had no friends. The only thing I cared about was my Spanish class.

My teacher, Xavier Morales, was a Mexican immigrant. He had gotten his first degree in Mexico City, and then a Master's in Austin. He made jokes: he said he was one of the few Mexicans to enter the U.S. bone-dry. Everybody laughed except me. He should be proud, I thought; he speaks two languages. He ran his class at a brisk pace that once made a student cry out “shit!” when he couldn't keep up. We did drills, read passages in choral practice, struggled with our accents, until we started grinning at ourselves, picking up our heads and wanting to answer. Some kids weren't as fast, but even they liked Morales' class. I felt it was the one safe place in my day. I liked the way the words felt on my tongue, the cadence and timbre of my voice. Spanish took me out of myself. Mr. Morales offered to lend me records to practice at home, and I was embarrassed because I didn't have a record player. I lay in bed that night thinking about him, and I realized he was the only human being in the world whose opinion of me counted. After that I studied even harder.

One day, coming out of class, he said, “You know, you're becoming Mexican in your manners.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“Meaning you're learning to use words to hide your feelings,” he answered. It was the first time I realized there was power in language.

Kermit and his girlfriend Sherry invited me to outings to the sand dunes or to the reservoir to swim, or to the beautiful clear springs a hundred miles away where we could swim and drink beer and get burned by the sun. I knew it was Sherry's idea; Kermit would never have thought of me. Sherry had a niceness about her. I thought it probably made her good at the bank.

I was out of place with Kermit's friends, though. I was too young. I thought the boys were vulgar, with their jokes and crumpled beer cans, though their girlfriends tended to be calm and smiling, unless they got drunk and sick or loud. I knew the boys thought I was standoffish, not so much shy as distant, like maybe I thought I was too good for them, boys with their hair cut close to their skulls, and cutoff jeans with nothing underneath except their genitals they went out of the way to expose, always sitting with their legs up and their arms resting on their knees. I did feel distant; I couldn't follow the talk about sports and cars, and I didn't think their jokes were funny. I was bored and embarrassed when they screamed and belly flopped, tugged at the girls' bathing suits in the cold spring pool, nudged and kissed in the car while I hugged a window, looking out, my cheeks on fire. I was so different, and I didn't know why. I would have liked to be more like the girls they liked. I would have liked to have the boys touch me—I was curious and lonely—but I was too young, and an outsider, a queer foreigner of some kind, and I knew that if I pretended to be like the girls, and they touched me, my brother's hearty sunburned friends, I would fall under them like something liquid, and they would take it all, before I knew if I wanted to give it away. They would know I was trying to keep up, and they'd do what they were always saying they'd like to do to some starlet (Sandra Dee, in “A Summer Place,” was the sweetest, they said, and she really needed it), which was to fuck her brains out. Besides, there was my brother. When I looked at him I couldn't imagine what he thought of me. Probably nothing. He was looking ahead.

I got a part-time job at Penney's. They put me in the department that sold men's underwear. I amused myself guessing sizes before they asked. Then I thought: if I have to do this all my life I'll kill myself. It wasn't a farfetched idea. The father of a sophomore girl at school had blown his brains out in his bathtub, and then her mother took an overdose and left her orphaned. Another boy lost his mother when his father followed her to a motel room where she was meeting his law firm's partner. In Texas you could shoot a woman like that. Worse, a girl my same age held a gun in her mouth one night and begged her boyfriend to shoot her. He liked somebody else, and she was always crying. He buried her in a caliche pit. They quoted him in the paper: “I just did what she asked me to do.”

One day I saw a boy in the library, checking out a book. His eyelashes made shadows, he had extraordinary, glossy hair. I realized he was Mexican; his eyes never looked at mine. I started seeing him here and there, in the gym at assembly, in the lunchroom when I forced myself to eat. I thought about going up to him and saying “Como estas,” just like that, and the thought made me laugh at myself.

I bought a bicycle. Kermit said I looked freaky, zipping around with my little basket in front piled with books and my purse. I didn't care. Suddenly I could get around. I rode it to school, and to work on Saturdays. In the evenings I rode around my neighborhood, going a little farther each time. I realized that most of our neighborhood was Mexican. Their houses were like ours, on lots with scruffy patches of grass and weeds—boxy, dilapidated rentals where for block after block you never saw a tree. Cars sat up on blocks, and there were motorcycles, and sometimes a car polished like a gem, trimmed in pink and orange and yellow, with curlicues in front like moustaches, and tendrils running down the sides. Sometimes I saw the owners shining their prizes with soft rags. They would look up and watch me ride by. After a few weeks they recognized me and their gazes were more open, a little friendlier. Boys of eleven or twelve made chirping noises at me, but I laughed at them and they went off to other things. The men wore white undershirts with baggy pants, green or khaki in color; their hair fell down around their ears, and many of them sported trim moustaches. The women, in cheap dresses, sat on steps and watched their men, and the babies ran around naked.

One day I realized I was looking for the boy from school. Then, not long after, I came out of school and found one tire flat. The boy I'd seen in the library was coming toward me. He wore a tight black knit shirt and jeans, shiny black shoes, and a chain with a medal around his neck. He said he had a pickup, he was on his way to work. “I'll take you there and patch your tire,” he offered. “The Texaco on Sixth. I'll put your bike in the back, okay?” His voice was soft.

“I see you around school,” he said as he pulled out of the lot. “Are you a junior? Senior?”

“Junior. What about you?” I couldn't have guessed his age.

“Senior,” he said. “Justaboutout,” he added, in a slur.

“What then?” I asked, for something to say.

“No more school. Like, you know. I mean, you just go on making it, huh?” He kept glancing back and forth from his driving to me. “What's your name?” he asked. When I told him I'd been named for the song, “Abilene,” he didn't react at all. Of course Mexicans are named for Jesus, and saints, heroes, and states of grace.

“I'm Eddie,” he volunteered.

“Eddie?”

“Doncha like it?”

I was embarrassed. I saw hostility flash across his face.

“All right. Eduardo. My family calls me Lalo. But my friends, Eddie. Anglo. Better for getting by.”

I wondered what I ought to do. Was he being bold? Would he flirt with other Anglo girls? (Was he flirting with me?!) Maybe he thought I was easy! I sat with my legs closed tight until we arrived at the station. He patched my tire while I stood by watching in silence. He checked the bike all over and got a grease gun to work down around the pedals. Then he wheeled it off to the side and propped it up. “Good as new,” he said.

I didn't want to leave. I stepped in front of him to take the handlebars, and I could feel the warmth of him coming off like steam. Somebody called out from inside the garage, “Hey Eddie, qu-hubo, mano?” There was nothing to do but ride away.

That night I rode a long time through the streets near home. I looked at people sitting on their steps in the dark, or under the yellow glow of porch lights. I heard televisions blaring, and fast bouncy Mexican songs. I wished there was someone at my house to sit with. When I went into my room, I thought about Mr. Morales with his hair slicked down and his nylon shirt tight across his chest, and I thought again of Eddie. (Lalo, I rolled on my tongue.) I thought how he would sweat in the heat, how his breath would make a pillow damp. I bet he wouldn't tell, I thought.

I saw Natty Mooster coming out of the gym one day. She had lavender hair and a skirt six inches shorter than anybody else's. She was gone before I could call out to her. What would I say? I wondered. “Remember me?”

At Christmas we went in Kermit's new (used) pickup to see Dad. He had rented a trailer in a cheap park, all dust and garbage cans and screaming kids. Once we'd gone to a cafeteria to eat, and Kermit and I had each given what sounded like little speeches about what we were doing (Kermit was going to start night school in January), Bud started drinking beer and turned on the television. We went home the next day. Bud didn't act surprised. He said he was glad to see us, and maybe we'd come another time. That was all. That was the last time I saw my dad.

Early in the new year Kermit started acting funny. He was out almost every night, and I didn't know what to say when Sherry called. One night he took me to a drive-in and bought hamburgers, and while we were eating in the car, I told him what I thought, that he looked like the cat that ate the bird.

He leaned back and closed his eyes. “What you see is a satisfied man.”

“Lord, what does that mean?”

He sat up and took a bite of his dripping hamburger. “It means I'm getting laid,” he said pleasantly. “But don't get any ideas, because it's a man's world.”

“How come I don't see Sherry anymore?”

He backed the car out so fast my Coke spilled on my lap. I sopped it up with napkins and heard Kermit say, “I don't see her anymore, nose-butt.”

He wouldn't say who his new girlfriend was. I figured it out one night when she called and I said he was asleep. “Can't you wake him up?” the girl asked. I said he'd been really tired, he'd worked hours overtime. “Well hell,” she said, “how much rest does he need?” She laughed. “Tell him he missed a good time.”

I told Kermit it was the weirdest thing I ever heard, that he would go out with Natty Mooster. And “go out” wasn't what they did. He told me to stuff it. But with the secret out, Natty started coming over when my mother wasn't home, lying around with Kermit in his filthy room drinking beer and watching the little television he'd bought for himself. (I hated him for that. All my mother had wanted for years was a TV.) She gave me superior smiles and said things like “Aren't you growing right up now?” and “Wonder, do you take after your brother in any important ways?” Once she came up behind me when I was standing at the refrigerator thinking what there was to eat. She put her arms around me from the back and pulled herself close, and then she put her mouth down on my neck and made a chill run down my back. I yanked away so hard the pickle jar rattled on the top shelf of the refrigerator. I was going to say something really hateful to her, but when I turned around she had a soft look on her face, sweet as the way she'd look at her sister Plum, and tears came up so fast I had to run out of the house to let my feelings go.

When a creepy second-string basketball player from history class called and asked me out, I said yes without a second thought. I didn't even know for sure which boy it was until he said something to me after class about seeing an Elvis movie. After we did that, he drove to the edge of town to park. His name was Farin. He had beer on the back floor of the car. It was warm, but I drank two. “God I'm full!” I said in a while, in a giddy voice that amazed me and made me laugh. “I've got to pee!” Farin gestured grandly to the horizon. “Pick your spot,” he said. He gave me a smirky smile as I slid out of the car and went around behind. Pee splashed on my shoe, and I tried to wipe it against the tire. I knew I'd die if I had to think of anything to say. I wanted desperately to be at home instead, but not because there was anything so bad about Farin. (He wore a nice aftershave, and he'd been sweet and polite at the movie.) It was that I didn't know what was coming or what to do. I didn't want to do too much. I didn't want to make Farin mad.

When I got back in the car, he pulled me toward him and put his wide wet mouth down over my face. What he got was a mouthful of lips. “You can do better than that, can't you?” he said. He said it nicely.

“Whatever you say,” I said, regretting instantly the generosity that implied. I opened my mouth and his tongue went in deep and glided around. I thought the beer from his mouth tasted better than the beer in mine. I was having a hard time breathing. He let off from kissing and began fumbling with my blouse. It was a bleeding Madras plaid from Penney's. My straight skirt matched it. In a moment his hand had slipped inside my bra and over my nipple. I felt as if he had stuck a pin in me.

“Whatcha scared of?” he muttered. I was cold and tense, but I moved a hand up on the back of Farin's neck, and slid my fingers back and forth. “Let go!” he hissed. “You're a-ticklin' me!” Now I didn't know what to do with either hand. I extended my arm away from Farin's ticklish neck. My blouse was pulled out of my skirt by now. I felt twisted as a pretzel. Suddenly Farin moved away from me. He seemed to be staring at a spot on my throat. Then he lunged at me and pulled my blouse down off my shoulders.

“I don't know—” I faltered. I wasn't sure what was expected on a first date. I felt absolutely nothing. Farin was tugging at me like I was a limp doll when I said, “I hardly know you.” I wondered if he was disappointed at my small breasts tucked inside my lightly molded bra. Farin ignored me. He expertly undid the bra. It dangled. He slipped it down so that it hung off the sides of my upper arms. It was ludicrous, my clothes dripped off me. I shrugged out of my blouse and bra and they fell into my lap.