Carry Me Like Water (22 page)

He remembered himself in Seattle that summer. As he had walked along the shore of Lake Washington, he remembered seeing a heron gliding over the water, its wings flapping, then spreading, the labor of its slow-moving wings dwarfing the sky. He remembered how it had flown up, up almost as if the white and lonely bird knew he was there and needed reminding that flight and movement and grace were possible in the physical world despite the limiting pull of gravity. For a reason he did not understand at the time, he felt the heron was freeing him, and that flight, common occurrence that it was, was anything but common. That flight was everything there was in the world, and everything seemed to depend upon the grace of that flight. He urged it to fly on, to fly as if the beating of its wings would save the world, would save him from all the cruelties that had been and were yet to be. He remembered the clarity of his voice as he shouted at the great white heron: “Fly, fly!” He had yelled and yelled until he had almost gone hoarse. He was so mesmerized by the flight that he had lost control of his voice, of his mind, of his body. It occurred to him that he had never bothered to watch birds in flight; he had been oblivious to them because nothing else had existed except his pain. He had not felt himself to be a part of the world, of the earth. He was a permanent and unnatural foreigner, and there could be no possible home for him. But he
knew he would keep what he had just seen, he would put the scene in his brain as if it were a pocket where he could store a lucky penny.

Many years later, he had dreamed the flight of the heron and it had been so real that he expected to find himself at that same lake when he woke. Joaquin had asked him about his dream. “You were yelling, ‘Fly, fly!’” “
I
don’t remember,” he’d said. He’d lied and had not felt bad about the lie. There were certain things that were only his and not even Joaquin could have them. He looked out the window at the slowly moving fog and thought of that nineteen-year-old boy wandering, lost. He was moved by the image of that wounded boy, and wondered how that boy had managed to survive the cities he had lived in, had managed to survive his own rages, his own flirtations with destruction. He loved that boy, now, loved him for what he had survived. On the way to the hospital, Jake wondered if it wasn’t time to start thinking about letting go of Joaquin. “But how will
I
live without his eyes, his hands, his voice?” He saw a convenience store, found a parking spot, then ran in and bought a pack of cigarettes. He sat on the hood of his car surrounded by the gray morning, and smoked a cigarette. He held the smoke in his lungs as if it were Joaquin.

6

A
LL MUNDO REMEMBERED
of his stabbing was the face of the sonofabitch who stuck a knife in him. He remembered thinking “I’ll find you, I’ll find you.” He couldn’t recall how the fight started, why it started, who had started it. He remembered the stench of rotting tomatoes as he fell into another world. He remembered thinking that Rosie would come and save him. He smelled her sweat as he fell into a deep sleep, her smell overpowering the smell of rot around him. When he woke, he half-expected her to be at his side—there, beside him again. She was not there—she had not come. As he slept in Diego’s apartment, a part of him reached for the world of the dead. No longer having a sense of direction, he was lost, unaware of where he was. He stretched out on Diego’s bed, shaking and mumbling to himself. He felt tired. He wanted to let go. He wanted to sleep forever, go to a place where there was no more fighting, no more pain. Maybe Rosie would be waiting for him in that place. He would make love to her there and she would hold him until there was nothing but peace.

Diego watched the young man lying on his bed but couldn’t make out anything he was mumbling. He saw his lips move occasionally and his attempts at kicking off the blankets. Maybe he wasn’t saying anything, Diego thought, maybe he was just moaning from the pain.
He had stitches over his left eye and a bruise on his cheekbone. He had bandages on his side where they’d stuck him with a knife. The nurse had promised to come by if they needed her, “He was lucky,” she said, “the knife missed his vital organs. He’ll live long enough to gel himself into another fight.”

Saturday night Diego slept on some blankets on the floor. Sunday, Mundo slept all day. Sunday night, his new roommate seemed on the verge of waking up. He kept opening and closing his eyes, Diego sat at his desk wondering whether or not he was going to be all right. He should have woken up by now, he thought. Maybe he should get Mr, Arteago to call the nurse for him.

Diego looked up and noticed Mundo staring at him.

Mundo did not recognize the man in the room with him. The thought occurred to him that maybe he had died and the man standing in front of him was God. He shook his head, his vision returning clearly. He laughed to himself. How could that man be God? In the first place, Mundo was certain he would never make it to heaven. In the second place, the man standing before him looked like a Chicano. God, a Chicano? He wanted to laugh at his own thoughts. His mother had given him too much religion as a little boy—it had made his head soft. He stared at the man who was looking at him curiously. “Where the fuck am I?” he asked.

Diego stared at him and started to write an answer on his pad.

“How come you don’t answer—answer me, godamnit!”

Diego put down his pad and took out a large sheet of paper.

“Calm down, you’re all right. I’m deaf so try not to speak so fast so
I
can read your lips. And save your voice—it won’t help if you yell.”

“Oh shit!” Mundo said. “I died and got stuck with a goddamned deaf man as my roommate.” He lifted himself from where he was lying and sat up on the bed. He winced. He placed his feet on the floor and made circles with them.

Diego looked at him blankly. “If you don’t look at me, then I won’t be able to answer you.” He lifted up the paper and showed it to him.

Mundo tried to laugh. “I’ll be goddamned.” He began laughing.
trying to hold back. “I hate to fuckin’ read, man. I don’t even fuckin’ read the
National Enquirer.”

Diego nodded. “If you don’t read it, how do you know it exists?”

“My old lady reads it—it’s the only thing she likes to read. You ever read it?”

“No,” Diego wrote. “I like real newspapers.”

Mundo saw a copy of the
El Paso Times
sitting on the floor. “You call that real?”

Diego shrugged his shoulders. “It’s the best we got in this city.”

“Better to have fuckin’ nothing.”

“Something is better than nothing,” Diego wrote.

“That’s bullshit, man.”

Diego said nothing. They sat in an uncomfortable silence for a while. Finally Mundo said, “Hey, you read lips pretty good. It’s a nice trick, man. Not bad for a deaf guy.”

Diego smiled. “I got a good brain. It works real good.”

“That’s cool,” Mundo nodded. He looked around the dark room. “How long have I been here? What’s your name, man?”

“My name’s Diego,” he wrote.

“No shit? My old man’s name was Diego. That sonofabitch took off—haven’t seen him for a while. He just took off from the house one day. Just split.” He kept moving his feet in circles. “So what day is it?”

“Sunday night.”

He stared at the note. “Ah shit! Sunday night? I been steepin’ all that time?”

“You lost some blood.”

Mundo laughed. “No shit. But I kept enough to stay alive, right? I got more blood than those pinches figured I had. So how come I wound up here with you?”

“The nurse from La Fe Clinic helped bring you here. It was that or call the cops.”

“Which nurse?”

“The gringa with the green eyes.”

“Yeah, I know which one. She’s all right. She’s a little tight sometimes, you know? But most of the time she’s OK.”

Diego nodded in agreement. “I like her—she’s a good person.” “How’d I get to the clinic?”

“Tencha, who sells fruit in front of the clinic, saw you in one of the dumpsters. You almost gave her a nervous breakdown.”

“What the fuck’s a dumpster?”

Diego looked at him. He thought a minute and wrote, “You know, one of those big things where everybody throws the trash.”

“Those fuckin’ bastards!”

“If you get too excited, I won’t be able to read your lips.” He held up the paper.

“I can’t fuckin’ help it,” he yelled. He clenched his teeth and mumbled something.

“When you clench your teeth, I can’t make out what you’re trying to say.”

Mundo nodded. “Hijos de sus chingadas madres. When I find those motherfuckers, I’m gonna castrate each one of them. Those sons of bitches threw me in a trash can!” He coughed and winced from the pain in his side.

“Got any booze? Algo fuerte.”

Diego nodded, got up, and walked toward the closet. He took out a bottle and two glasses and poured them both a drink. He handed Mundo one of the glasses.

Mundo took a big gulp. “What is this shit?”

Diego stared at the gold in his glass. “Cognac,” he wrote.

Mundo looked at the unfamiliar word, “Cog-nac,” he said.

Diego laughed when he saw him pronounce the “g.” “You don’t say the ‘g.’ The ‘g’ is muda—silent—like me. You pronounce it coñac.” He wrote a tilde over the “n.” “It’s a French word.”

Mundo read the page and repeated slowly, “Cogñac. So what the hell are you, a fuckin’ professor? You can’t even talk and you’re fuckin’ correcting me.”

“Don’t get mad. And why do you say ‘fuckin” all the time?”

“Because it’s a good word. If you don’t like it, then look away.” He took another drink. He looked down at his feet and looked at Diego. “How the hell do you know what the word sounds like? You’ve never even heard it.”

“I read a lot. I go to the library. I had a good teacher—I learned
a lot of things. I read all sons of things, and I read the dictionary. It tells you what words mean and it tells you how to pronounce them—even though I can’t pronounce them all. I try to imagine it. I know a lot about the hearing world.”

“So you read—OK—so what? Why do it when you can’t talk?”

“Because when I know how a word is pronounced it helps me to read lips better. Like I told you, I had a good lip-reading teacher. She taught me a few tricks.”

Mundo nodded. “You think you’re pretty fuckin’ smart, don’t you?” He laughed. “So you read French words, right? What the fuck’s wrong with Spanish? You think you have to know a fancy foreign language or something to show everyone you’re smart?”

Diego shook his head. “I’m deaf. All languages are foreign.”

Mundo laughed. “You’re weird, man, you know?”

Diego nodded and smiled. “Yeah, I know. You know I read how they make cognac in a book about wines. I wanted to try the stuff, so I did. And I liked it. It cost me more than a shirt. I hardly ever drink it. Way too expensive.”

“Don’t you get bored at the library?”

“Sometimes, but I’ve never been stabbed in one.”

Mundo laughed. “A que cabrón. You’re a real smart mouth—even on paper. It’s a good thing you can’t talk—otherwise you would have been stabbed by now.”

Diego laughed.

“You make noises, man, did you know that?”

“Yeah,” Diego wrote, “deaf people can make a lot of noise.”

Mundo nodded. “See, it’s like the old lady says, we’re all the same.”

Nodding, Diego took a sip of cognac.

“I can’t believe those goddamned pinche bastards threw me in the garbage. Man, to die in the streets is one thing, man, the streets, that’s all right. But to die in a fuckin’ trash can? Someone’s gonna pay for this. I’m gonna get even.”

Diego watched him as he emptied his glass.

“This stuff ain’t so bad, man. I could get into this French shit. But I don’t like their fuckin’ language, got it? They sound like a bunch of pinche jotos—queers, you know? I got a sister who took
French in school. Thought she was hot shit. La cabrona wouldn’t speak no Spanish. She thought she was too good. But she learned French, the bitch. Pendeja. She married a gringo and lives on the west side and votes on election day—the whole nine yards. Probably, she’s gonna teach her half-breed coyote kids to speak French.”

“I got a sister who’s a pendeja, too,” Diego wrote, “not too smart.”

They both laughed, Diego sipped his cognac. He drank it slowly and let the warm liquid sit on his tongue. It made his mouth taste good. Diego poured Mundo another glass and offered him a cigarette. He smoked it in silence. Diego could tell he was in pain.

Diego watched him for a long time. Finally he wrote, “I got to go to work early in the morning. You can stay as long as you want. Doesn’t bother me. I have some crackers and stuff if you get hungry. I’ll bring some food home from Vicky’s when I come home tomorrow. If you’re hungry right now, I could go out and get something,” He handed the note to Mundo who took his time reading it.

“No, man, I ain’t hungry. Maybe tomorrow.” He looked at Diego and nodded. “That’s where I seen you. I knew that I’d seen you before, somewhere. That pinche that runs your place is the biggest asshole I ever met. Everyone calls him a sonofabitch. We’re fuckin’ boycotting his place.”

Diego nodded. “Get some rest,” he wrote. “I’ll probably be gone by the time you wake up. Make yourself at home. I’ll leave a note for Mr. Arteago—he’s the landlord—and tell him I got a cousin visiting me. That way he won’t say anything. You know, I think Mr. Arteago and my boss are related.”

Mundo laughed and put out his cigarette, falling back into bed. He lifted his head and looked at Diego. “Now even my eyes hurt. I haven’t read this much since I quit school.” He laughed. Diego watched him as he mumbled himself to sleep.

In the dark, Mundo wondered about his life. He was getting too old to belong to the gang. Things were getting rougher and rougher. Maybe it was time to get out. He had held on to the idea of hand-to-hand combat with competing gangs, but he was losing the battle. Everybody wanted guns now and he didn’t have the stomach for shooting people down—even those he hated. The knife was still his weapon of choice—the knife and his fists. Lately, he had been thinking
he was getting too tired—too tired or old for all this shit. But it was all he had ever known. Maybe he would ask Rosie to marry him, but she would say no. He had asked her once already.