Caramelo (50 page)

In her forties she was most acutely aware of this shift of herself and of her place in society, and it had made her difficult and quarrelsome, subject to sadnesses that seized her suddenly, and just as suddenly disappeared. Eventually she grew used to being ignored, being not seen, not looked at, not raising men’s heads or having their eyes graze her as they had once, and there was some relief to that, some calmness, as if a knife had been put away.

Now that she was ill, with her breathing heavy, and her consciousness rising and falling, she became aware of that familiar feeling of shedding her body once again. It both delighted and frightened her.

She was turning invisible. She was turning invisible. What she had feared her whole life. The body led her, a wide rowboat without oars or a rudder, drifting. Giddy, she didn’t need to do a thing, simply be. Like floating in a lagoon of warm water.

Once when her children were little, she had felt like this on a beach in the Yucatán. It was one of the few times Narciso took his family on vacation. After a long hot car trip from Mérida, they had stopped for a rest at a small lagoon, gulf water as clear as the air. Narciso and the children had wandered off in search of soft drinks and food, leaving her in peace finally.

At the shallow lip, Soledad had lain down on the rippled sand. The sand soft beneath her back, the ocean lap-lapping, the sky serenely cool through the palm fronds, and the light on that blue green surface dappled and happily laughing. Soledad fell asleep for a little, the water licking her earlobes, saying things she didn’t need to understand. A peace and joy she would remember forever after whenever she needed to feel safe.

That’s what she felt now as she was dying and her life was letting her go. A saltwater warmth of well-being. The water lifting her and her self floating out from her life. A dissolving and a becoming all at once. It filled her with such emotion, she stopped thrashing about and let herself float out of her body, out of that anchor her life, let herself become nothing, let herself become everything little and large, great and small, important and unassuming. Puddle of rain and the feather that fell shattering the sky inside it, votive candles flickering through blue cobalt glass, the opening notes of that waltz without a name, the steam from a clay bowl of rice in bean broth, and the steam from a fresh clod of horse dung. Everything, everything. Wise, delicate, simple, obscure. And it was good and joyous and blessed.

71.

The Great Divide
or This Side and That

      T
he night the Awful Grandmother dies, Mother orders us to open all the windows of the house. All of them. Even though it’s January. Even though it’s the middle of the night. Even though the Grandmother dies in the hospital and not the kitchen bedroom. Because the moment the Awful Grandmother closes her eyes and lets out her last hiccuped sigh, it’s as if skinny Death with her dog haunches scampers along the railroad tracks where Madero arrived and organized his Mexican revolution, sweeps herself over the downtown parking lots, across the homes of the south side of San Antonio to our house on El Dorado Street, because Mother says, —I can’t sleep, it stinks in here like rotten
barbacoa
.

I can’t smell it, but do what I’m told, open the windows just the same.
Barbacoa
reminds me too much of that one Sunday I bit into a
taco
and found a piece with hairs on it. What part of the cow head did I get? The ear? The nostril? An eyelash? What disgusted me most was the not knowing.

And then I start to think about all these things I shouldn’t think about. The fatty piece of
barbacoa
. An eyelash. Hair in a man’s ears just like the hair in a man’s nose. The hairy legs of flies. The spiral of sticky flypaper dangling above the meat counter at Taquería la Milagrosa on South Halsted Street droning, droning, droning that death song—instead of the things I should think about—love and heartily sorry, but I don’t feel anything for my grandmother, who at this very moment is no doubt
fluttering above our heads searching for her route out of this world of pain and rotten stink.

Barbacoa taquitos
. Sawdust on the floor to soak up the blood. When I was born Mother said she needed two things after getting out of the hospital, —Please, a pork chop sandwich from Jim’s Original Hot Dogs on Maxwell Street, and a
barbacoa taquito
just down the street at La Milagrosa. And me just born wrapped in my new flannel blanket, hair wet as a calf, face still long from coming through the birth chute, and my mother standing there on Halsted and Maxwell with her pork chop sandwich, and men with gold teeth hawking watches, and the balloon man with his prophylactic-shaped ugly balloons, and right across the street that man Harold my father always fights with every time he buys shoes, and La Milagrosa filled with mice. Don’t look!

This is what I’m thinking instead of the prayer I’m trying to compose, because I can’t think of anything to say for my grandmother who is simply my father’s mother and nothing to me. The more I try not to think of
barbacoa
, the more it comes up like the smell Mother claims, like those bulls’ heads and hooves in the Mexico City meat market, an eye sticky with flies, how when someone says, —Don’t look—that’s exactly what you do.

72.

Mexican on Both Sides
or Metiche, Mirona, Mitotera, Hocicona—en Otras Palabras, Cuentista—Busybody, Ogler, Liar/Gossip/Troublemaker, Big-Mouth—in Other Words, Storyteller

      Y
ou could be royalty and be poor. You could not have money for nice clothes and still be better than the rat-faced girls with rotten teeth who spit bad words at you.
Bolilla. Perra. Puta
. You could be under a spell. Things could go from worse to worst. Stuff like that happens in
telenovelas
all the time. Right before the happy ending, the cliff-hanger where the heroine has to just hold on because everything’s against her. That’s what I tell myself to keep going. That’s what I’ve got to believe, because to not believe just depresses the hell out of me.

—We’ll need to tighten our belt at least a year, Mother says. —Just till we get back on our feet.

All our money went getting us to Texas, buying the house on El Dorado Street, starting the shop on Nogalitos Street. And then the Grandmother dying, and her hospital bills that swallowed up all her money, and the funeral and burial in Mexico City, well, it’s a hard spell, that’s all.

Just for a spell. Or just a spell. A spell somebody wicked cast. A somebody like the Grandmother. I don’t say it out loud, but it’s what I’m thinking. She’s the reason we’re stuck here.

At the first of the month, Father’s forced to tell Mars another story as
to why the shop rent is late again. To try to get more business, Father even goes so far as to change the name of his shop. Across the window in big red and gold letters,
KING UPHOLSTERY
with that same old funky crown perched sassy on the “
K
.”

—Father, don’t you like “Tapicería Reyes” anymore?

—Los güeros
, Father says and sighs. —“King” makes them think of King Ranch. This way they think Mr. King is the boss, and I just work for him.

Belt-tightening. That’s how it is I get my wish and am transferred from Immaculate Conception to Davy Crockett, the public school across the freeway.

But Crockett’s a vocational high school. That means there’s nothing here for me. I don’t want to wind up being a farmer or a beautician. I want to take classes like anthropology and drama. I want to travel someday. Be in a movie, or even better, make a movie. I want to do something interesting, I don’t know what yet, but you can bet it’s not something they offer at a vocational. I’m going to live in San Francisco in an attic apartment with bead curtains. I’m going to design houses, or teach blind kids to read, or study dolphins, or discover something. Something useful.

Davy Crock-of-shit Vocational. Home of the Future Farmers of America. Livestock shows. Rodeos. Majorettes twirling batons. Home Ec. Machine Shop. The Davy Crockett marching band with cheerleaders in raccoon hats and fringed booties. Creeps in nerdy glasses and crew cuts. Girls still wearing their hair poufed into a Patty Duke bubble. Super-straight. Like they escaped from the fifties, I’m not kidding.

Viva says I shouldn’t complain. —At least you ain’t got nuns on your ass. And think of it this way, La. You get to go to school with guys.

What I don’t tell her is that the guys at my new school act like it’s me that’s the freak. They talk to each other like this:

—Man, you’re fatter than shit!

—The good life.

—Damn right.

And this is how they talk to me:

—Hey, hippie girl, you Mexican? On both sides?

—Front and back, I say.

—You sure don’t look Mexican.

A part of me wants to kick their ass. A part of me feels sorry for their stupid ignorant selves. But if you’ve never been farther south than Nuevo
Laredo, how the hell would you know what Mexicans are supposed to look like, right?

There are the green-eyed Mexicans. The rich blond Mexicans. The Mexicans with the faces of Arab sheiks. The Jewish Mexicans. The big-footed-as-a-German Mexicans. The leftover-French Mexicans. The
chaparrito
compact Mexicans. The Tarahumara tall-as-desert-saguaro Mexicans. The Mediterranean Mexicans. The Mexicans with Tunisian eyebrows. The
negrito
Mexicans of the double coasts. The Chinese Mexicans. The curly-haired, freckled-faced, red-headed Mexicans. The jaguar-lipped Mexicans. The wide-as-a-Tula-tree Zapotec Mexicans. The Lebanese Mexicans. Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say I don’t look Mexican. I
am
Mexican. Even though I was born on the U.S. side of the border.

I tell them a story.

—I come from a long line of royalty. On both sides. The Reyes have blue blood going back to Nefertiti, the Andalusian gypsies, the dancing-for-their-dowry tribes in the deserts of North Africa. And that’s not even mentioning my mother’s family, the Reynas, from Monte Albán, Tenochtitlán, Uxmal, Chichén, Tzin Tzun Tzán. I could go on and on.

—You’re just like your father, Mother says. —A born liar. Nothing but a bunch of liars, from his mother all the way back to the great-grand-something-or-other who said he was descended from the king of Spain. Look, the Reyes are nothing but
mitoteros
, and if they say they’re not, they’re lying. If you ask me, all people from Mexico City are liars. They can’t help it. That’s just how the
chilangos
are. Kiss you on each cheek when they meet you like they knew you their whole life. And they just met you! Makes me sick.
¡Chilangos, metiches, mirones!
God, if there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s
chilangos
. And the
familia
Reyes. And Mexicans.

How can I explain? Talk is all I’ve got going for me.

I’m going to try to tell the truth here, though Mother says I’m just like Father. There are at least seven evil enemies at Davy Crockett who’d like nothing better than to slap the crap out of me. Cookie Cantú, who thinks she’s a big shit because she works in the office as an attendance aide. Norma Estrada. Suzy Pacheco. Alba Treviño. Elvia Ochoa. Rose Falcón. And Debra Carvajal. They’ve got it in for me after a history class where I made the mistake of telling the story of my great-grandfather Eleuterio Reyes from Seville.

Is hell San Antonio? Is hell the
urraca
birds, grackles, sounding off like clowns? Sad, strange yelling. Sky so blue it hurts. Heat making white people a goofy pink, and brown people shiny.

Is hell Cookie Cantú and her yappy
perras
talking shit like, —Brown power! Making fists and chanting, —
Viva la raza
. Or, —I’m Chicana and proud, wha’chu wanna do about it,
pendeja
?

Give me a break already.

When they catch me alone, —Bitch! Pretending like you’re Spanish and shit.

Then they just let air out from their teeth like a tire with a slow leak.

I don’t say a damn thing, but that’s enough for those girls to hate my guts.

Pisses me off. What can you say when you know who you are?

They call me
bolilla
when they cross my path, or worse,
gabacha
. Who wants to be called a white girl? I mean, not even white girls want to be called white girls. Words I can ignore. It’s the
chingazos
that do the damage.

Father promised us all new stuff when we moved to Texas, but our house would be as empty as a ransacked tomb if it wasn’t for Mother. Almost everything we have is loot we found at yard sales, flea markets, and at the secondhand shops.

—You’ll see, when the seat’s reupholstered it’ll look just like the chairs your father made for his Winnetka ladies.

In Chicago, Mother and I would walk for blocks over to the Salvation Army for treasures, sometimes as far as the Goodwill. We had to pass the Cook County hospital, where the patients looked like their faces were sliced in a knife fight, crooked black stitches like the twine Father uses when he is basting something. Even Father sewing with his feet could do a better job than those doctors. Terrible as Frankenstein, the county hospital patients were something awful to look at. But we
had
to. It was the shortest route to Goodwill.

In San Antonio, almost as soon as we get here, Mother scouts out the thrift stores, yard sales, and rummage sales. There’s a giant Goodwill a few miles north from Father’s shop, and we take to walking there in the sun with our umbrellas, like the natives. If we’re lucky, it’s overcast and we can forget the umbrellas. —Beautiful day, no? This is the only place I’ve ever lived where a cloudy sky means a beautiful day.

The smell of old men and shirts ironed too long is what probably
makes people not want to buy used, is what probably makes Father pissed when he finds out we’ve been to
la usada
on the sneakity-sneak. Father would rather die than own anything that belonged to someone else. We don’t tell him that half the things in our house are from the secondhand stores. Better he doesn’t know. Why start trouble? So as not to upset him, we make up stories, healthy lies about where a certain table or a chair came from. A hand-me-down we found stored in the back shed. A gift from our neighbor’s cousin. Or, if we’re desperate, —You gave it to us, remember?