Caramelo (43 page)

Two hundred and forty pounds of Harold is standing with a shoe box in one hand, tissue paper gaping over, one shoe in the other hand. —Those costs you double in the Loop, Harold is saying to a black mother who is buying a pair of red high-tops for her lanky baby-faced boy.

Harold’s best shoes come in strange sizes, display shoes from the windows, tiny as a Cinderella. “Good lucky” for Father he has small feet.

It smells sweet in Harold’s, dusty and sweet as leather. The box window fan revolving slowly. All of Harold’s salesmen are young boys in ties, the place too hot for ties, especially today. Everyone sweating. Harold, tie-less, standing among a pile of messy boxes, talking too loud. How does he find anything here? He does. It’s not a fancy shop. The grime, the dirt, the sweet leather smell. Harold wiping his face with a handkerchief. He knows shoes like Father knows sofas.

There are only a few chairs, the ones with seats that lift up like in the
movies. Mother and the Grandmother have already claimed the last two, Mother fanning herself with a shoe box lid, the Grandmother flicking a limp handkerchief.

Harold demands you step on a box lid when you try on a shoe. It’s a bit dim and dark, and there’s a real disorder that nobody minds, which makes finding a pair more exciting. At any second another Chicago fire could start, a spontaneous combustion of shoe polish and paper and shoehorns and dirty shelves. At any moment the place could collapse in a sea of flames. A speckled light enters from the windows that have been painted over in green paint. The windows yawning open. Noise of street hucksters and hawkers. The sticky scent of pork chop sandwiches rising from Jim’s Original Hot Dogs.

But at Harold’s Father forgets that British wing tips mean excellence. —Dirt, dirt, he says in Spanish, when examining the slippery leather soles, the fine stitching, the sweet scent of real Italian calfskin. —Trash, he keeps muttering in Spanish. —
Mugre. Porquería. ¡Fuchi!
Father feels it’s his duty to insult the merchandise. He’s furious whenever we pay the first price quoted for anything. —Fools! Store owners expect you to haggle.

—How much, my friend? Father asks.

—Them cost you fifty, Harold says, already talking to another customer.

—How much? as if he hadn’t heard.

Harold, sweating, looks at him, disgusted. —
Amigo
, I already told you, fifty bucks.
Cincuenta. Cinco
and oh.

Father: —Fifty? Then that look he is famous for, that eye of the rooster, head tilted a little as if he has razors tied to his talons and is about to attack in a gleam of green-black feathers and bloody foam.

—Fifty dollars? For
this dirt …

Harold brings his 240-pound body of businessman over and plucks the shoe box from Father’s hands. —For you,
not
for sale.

—Get outta …

—You get out of here, Reyes. Don’t bother me, I’m busy selling shoes.

—Twenty-five. I give you twenty-five.

—I already told you, forget it. They’re the best, those shoes.

—Sheet
on you. Get outta … Son of a mother … Muttering as we
all step down the rickety aluminum-tipped steps that
tap-tap
with our defeat.

Father is a man possessed. We talk to him, but his eyes are spirals. We tug his sleeve and point at items we’d like to buy—popsicles, bandanas, felt-tip pens. It’s useless.

After we’ve walked around the block and touched bunches of socks, six pairs for one dollar, after we’ve reached for a cold bottle of strawberry cream soda bobbing in an ice cooler with chunks of ice floating like icebergs, your hand numb when you finally fish it out, after we’ve heard the preacher man shouting for us to receive the Lord,
He
is coming, but he’s not here today at Maxwell Street, after we’ve walked past the doorways with big, busty women in halter tops and purple satin hot pants, after we’ve eyed sacks of Ruby Red grapefruit, a plaster Venus di Milo, a geranium plant growing in a coffee can, we
do
go back, we will go back, we must go back. Must we? We must! It’s terrible to have to climb the aluminum-tipped crooked stairs the second time.

Mother asks for the car keys.

Humiliating the third.

When we get to Harold’s, the Grandmother camps on the first step and says, —I’ll wait here.

—How much? Father asks Harold once more, as if this was the first time.

—Forty-five, Harold snorts. —And you’re getting them dirt cheap, too!

—Thirty! Father says.

—Forty! That’s what I paid for them.

—Thirty-five!

—I said forty and get outta here, you heard me!

Father pays his money, muttering, —Dirt, dirt, for this dirt. All the while Harold is stuffing the bills in his shirt pocket and waving him off, waving his arms as if saying, —You’re nuts, get lost, forget it. Both of them terribly angry, ruined even, all day. Enraged. Disgusted.

Triumphant!

^*
Taquitos de
Pine-Sol
.
   
Father’s favorite
taquería
is a place on Halsted Street called La Milagrosa, a few blocks south from Jim’s Original Hot Dogs on Maxwell. Father likes to tell the story about the first time he took Mother there. They were still newlyweds. Mother was not impressed
.
   
A hungry mob stands next to a greasy steel counter and waves plastic numbers in the air to butchers who dispense orders beneath a neon Virgen de Guadalupe and a dusty bull’s head with glass eyes. Curly strips of flypaper hang from the ceiling like streamers at a children’s party, the steady death drone of flies making the room jump
.
   
—How can you bring me here? This place looks like a dump, Mother says
.
   
—It
is
a dump, says Father. —That’s how you can tell the
tacos
are good
.
   
—I mean how do you expect me to eat here? Mother asks, eyeing the sawdust on the floor behind the butcher counter. —This place looks like it has bugs and mice
.
   
—Well, so does our house, but we eat there too, don’t we?
   
At this, Mother can think of no clever response. It’s true. They live in the only neighborhoods they can afford, where the rent is cheap and the fauna resilient. Mother tries not to look at the seams where the floor meets the wall. She orders a
chile relleno taco
and a
taco de cabeza.
Father asks for three brain tacos and two tongue, and a rice-water drink
.
   
At the moment their food arrives, almost as if on cue, a man appears with the ubiquitous mop and pail
^†
and starts to mop with Pine-Sol. The mop is a sweet stinky, as if it hasn’t dried properly, the Pine-Sol so strong it makes you blink. That smell, the sad smell of Saturday mornings, of hallways shared with other tenants, of nursing homes, of pets or people who have had accidents, of the poor who have nothing to clothe themselves with but pride. We may be poor, but you can bet we’re clean, the smell says. We may be poor. It is no disgrace to be pobre,
but … it’s very inconvenient
.

^†
Even Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of Hernán Cortés’ foot soldiers, cites in his wonderfully detailed chronicles the Mexican obsession with cleaning. This is true even today. You have only to arrive in the Mexico City airport, step off the plane into the waiting area, and your first encounter with Mexican culture will be to dodge someone furiously mopping. Especially if it’s the middle of the day. ¡
CUIDADO! WATCH OUT
!—warns a plastic yellow sign with a stick figure of a person falling on his back
.

60.

When an Elephant Sits on Your Roof

            —
L
ong distance from Texas, I say, handing the phone to Mother, —It’s Papa.

—¿Mijo?
Mother says tenderly. She always calls Father
mijo
when she’s feeling kind. Father’s been gone for over two weeks, long enough for Mother to miss him.

—¡Mi vida!
^*
¡Ya tenemos casa!
Father says, shouting so loud even I can hear him. —We’re homeowners!

Mother barrages him with questions, and finally finishes by telling Father to hang up and call back after eleven, when the rates are cheaper. Mother is as wild as if she’d won the lottery.

—Well, for once your grandmother has given us something other than headaches. She’s bought us a house in San Antonio. On a street named El Dorado. And your father’s found himself a shop nearby. Cheap too! A house, Lala! Think of it. Finally, after all these years.

—How many bedrooms? I ask.

—Bedrooms? Did he even tell me, or did I forget to ask? But he did say there’s an apartment in the back we can rent. That guy Mars had your father and your grandmother hunting up and down all over San Antonio till they found a house for the right price. We couldn’t even buy a garage for that amount of money here in Chicago. Not in a million years. You can bet we won’t have to lock up the gate every night to keep lowlifes from stealing my roses. Think, Lala, a garden without rats! We can sit outside after dark, and we won’t be scared, won’t that be something?

Mother starts laughing and phones her sister Frances. —Pancha,
guess what, you won’t believe it, good news. We bought a house. Uhhuh. In Texas. That’s right, San Antonio. No, there’s no Ku Klux Klan there. What are you talking about? It’s Mexican. Why do you think it’s called
San Antonio
and not Saint Anthony? Go on. You’re crazy. Go on, you’ve never even been there! Well, will you let me finish? If you won’t let me talk, I swear I’m going to hang up.

Father and the Grandmother took off to San Antonio just to look around, because Mars lured them down. But nobody believed Father would actually buy something on this trip. We thought maybe someday, like when he got old, and we sure didn’t think the Grandmother would be so generous.

It’s like our family’s been struck by lightning. It happens so fast we’re dazed by the smell of charred wood, the spiral of gray smoke. Mother announces we’re to pack and move this summer, to get there before school starts and all. That’s the plan. —Only bring the essentials, Father orders. —Everything else we’ll get in Texas.

—Texas? You’re kidding, Toto groans. —What’s in Texas?

—A house. Ours! You don’t think we’re going to keep throwing money at a landlord all our lives, do you? Mother says. —Your father’s going to be home any day now. We’ve got to start packing.

Memo and Lolo start their whining. —Packing! Again? We just finished helping Abuela move last summer. Do we have to?

—Yes, we have to. Your father’s orders, Mother says.

Or the Grandmother’s
, I think to myself. Same thing.

The older boys—Rafa, Ito, and Tikis—start a mutiny and argue they’ve got to stay in Chicago because they can’t afford to lose their college loans and grants. There’s no reason for them to move; in the past year they’ve been living away at dorms anyway. They can find a cheap apartment and live together during the summer.

—They’re so close to finishing! It won’t be long, Mother reminds Father once he’s home.

Father says as long as they’re in school, it doesn’t matter if the older boys stay in Chicago. —So they won’t have to work like me. And then he adds for the benefit of us younger kids, —Study and use your head, not your hands. He holds out his palms to scare the hell out of us. Hands as hard as shoe leather, layered and yellow like a Bible abandoned in a field.

I’m the only one who doesn’t complain about this breakup of our family. I’d be changing schools anyway even if we stayed, since I start
high school this fall. What I’ve never told anyone is this—I’ve wanted nothing more my whole life than to get out of here. To get out of the cold, and the stink, and the terror. You can’t explain it to somebody who’s never lived in a city. All they see is a pretty picture postcard. Buckingham Fountain at dusk. But take a good look. Those furry shapes scampering around the base aren’t kittens.

Father promised me the next address I’d have a room of my own, because even he admits I’m
“una señorita”
now, and he’s making good on that promise, I guess. There’s never anywhere we’ve lived that’s had enough bedrooms for all of us. Apartments aren’t built to sleep nine people. I sleep on a twin bed in the middle room, which would be all right if you didn’t have to cross through it to get to the other rooms. All this traffic, and never any privacy, and noise all the time, and having to dress and undress in the bathroom, the only room with a lock on the door except for the exit doors.

When I was a kid I slept in the living room on the orange Naugahyde La-Z-Boy, but I got too big to sleep there comfortably. Sometimes Father slept me and Memo and Lolo together. We’ve slept head to foot on bunk beds, on couches, on twin beds, on double beds, on cots, and on rollaways shoved in every room except the kitchen. We’ve slept just about everywhere except on the floor, which Father forbids. —Sleeping on the floor, like going barefoot, is low class, he says. Then he adds, —Do you want people to think we’re poor?

I can remember every flat we’ve ever rented, especially the ones I want to forget. Their hallways and their hallway smell, dank and dusty or reeking of Pine-Sol. A heavy door blunted with kicks, carved initials, and the scars from changes of locks like appendectomies. Fingerprints on the glass. No yard, or if there is a yard, no grass. A darkness to the hallway, like a cave or an open mouth. Paint old and splintering off. A skinny lightbulb naked and giving off a sickly glow. A dirty cotton string hanging from the bulb. Dust in between the posts of the banister. High ceilings. Walls oiled with hands. Voices behind the apartment doors. People downstairs who talk too loud, or people upstairs who walk too much. Neighbors who are a pain. Manolo and Cirilo, and their bad-mouth mama. Floorboards thumping to Mexican country music early in the morning, even on the weekends when you’re trying to sleep, for crying out loud.