Let Their Spirits Dance (18 page)

“He wants to draw maps of the universe,” Angelo says, folding his
arms in front of him. He seems as if he's just made an important announcement to the whole world.

“Are you going to help him?” asks Holly.

“Am I gonna help you?” Angelo asks Michael.

“Of course you are! We're gonna have our own observatory!”

“My, what a mind-blowing idea!”

Michael's got his laptop computer in a leather case. He slings it over his shoulder. “This,” he says, “is what's gonna keep us in touch with America. I made a web site for Nana.” He points to the web site address pasted on the inside of the van window, www.jramirez68.com. Holly jots it down on her notepad. On another window, Michael pasted the words VIETNAM MEMORIAL WALL. WE REMEMBER.

“Your grandmother's lucky to have a grandson who's so smart! I'll send you messages, and you tell me how everything's going. Will you, Michael?”

Michael is beaming into the camera, “Yeah, yeah, I will.”

Holly walks over to my mother. Mom's sitting in the van with Irene. Lisa and Lilly are behind her, adjusting their Walkman headphones and fluffing up their pillows. Mom's wearing her favorite pink blouse, dotted with bouquets of purple roses, a pair of black slacks, and Reebok tennis shoes. Her white hair is brushed back around her face, barely showing her ears, and smoothed down at the back of her head. From the back, she looks like she's wearing a white cap. She sets her cane up between the seat and window. Her eyes are full of the same look she gave me when she saw the photo of the Wall. She's got a surprise hiding behind her back, wouldn't I like to know! Irene's hair is dyed black and gathered into a bun. She's got a beauty mark, too, close to her bottom lip that Mom always said drove men crazy. I can't imagine either one of them ever making love, but I guess they did, they have kids. They're wearing their medallions of La Virgen and gold loops on their ears. I pick up the scent of bath powder, a surprising, newborn baby fragrance.

Irene's wearing a long navy blue dress with stockings and black-laced shoes. “You need tennis shoes,” Mom told her before they got on the van. She lifted the edge of her pant legs and showed off her white Reeboks. “Never!” said Irene. “Imagine, tu Nana en tenis!”

The two old women sit stiffly in the back seat, ready for their trip across the nation. Their faces are transformed with excitement, turning wrinkles into faint lines curving gently around eyes, cheeks, and lips. We're all children off on an adventure, Americans who have never seen America.

“This is the big day, Mrs. Ramirez!” Holly says. She points the microphone toward Mom.

“Yes, I think so. Did he call you again?”

“Who?”

“The man on your phone?”

“Oh, him…yes, he did.”

“Are you friends again?”

“No!”

“Good. You be strong, mija.” Holly looks flustered. She picks up the thread of her story again.

“You'll be at the Vietnam Wall soon, Mrs. Ramirez. How do you feel?”

“I feel God is with us, nothing can stop us.”

“You have so much faith!”

“We're moving into invisible parallels,” says Michael, “The invisible has spoken!”

“Stop that kid!” Paul yells. “He's gonna put all the New Agers on us.”

“You're so bright to come up with that!” Holly says to Michael.

“Yeah, he's a walking encyclopedia,” Paul says.

“He's a genius, pobrecito,” my mother says.

“I'm not a chip off the old block, that's for sure,” Michael says pointing to Paul. “That's my dad.”

“That's your father!” Holly says in amazement.

“You got a problem with that?” Paul asks her.

“No, of course not. It just took me by surprise. Tell me, Michael, do you believe your grandmother really is connected to a parallel universe?”

“That's one assumption. Nana has faith, and that's powerful, too. Subatomic particles are not independent energy. Everything's connected to everything else. What you do in one place affects the others, and that goes for the entire universe.”

“Gee, I'm impressed. I'll have to think about all that.”

“My mother is happy,” I tell the reporter. “She won't rest until we get to the Wall. She's made this promise, a manda we call it in Spanish, and there is no turning back.” Holly nods her head.

“Your mother is a beautiful woman. She inspired me the last time I spoke with her. I haven't been able to forget her and what she said to me.”

“Lots of people won't forget her,” says Michael. “She's the first nana with her own web page. We'll be talking to people we don't even know.”

“Yes, you will!” Holly says. “And to think you did it all on your
own!” She steps back and points to the flags, the U.S. flag and the Mexican flag, stuck on either side of the two vans. “That's colorful!”

“OK, who did this?” I ask.

“Cisco did,” says Manuel. “And look over there, he put a U.S. flag and a flag of China on Willy's car.”

“Yeah, Mom, people should know, we're not just Americans, we're Mexicans. We're Chicanos, Chinese too.”

“What's the difference between a Mexican and a Chicano?” asks Holly.

“Chicanos are second, third generation in the U.S. They are a mix of the Indian populations of Mexico and the Spanish Europeans. They call us Mestizos. Chicano is an Aztec word that used to be spelled with an
x
instead of
ch
. Originally we came north looking for Aztlán,” I tell her.

“What's Aztlán?”

“It's the mythical land of the Aztecs. They originated from Aztlán, from seven caves to what is now Mexico City, but was called Tenochtitlán in the old days. Many of them died wanting to find their homeland again.”

“How interesting, how very, very interesting.” She bores into my eyes as she did at the first interview. “Do
you
believe in Aztlán?”

“I believe in all kinds of things these days. Maybe we're standing in Aztlán right now. Maybe we'll be traveling through it to get to the Vietnam Wall. Can you tell me any different?”

“No, actually myths may have some truth in them.”

“Or, the truth may be a myth, and a myth the truth. Have you ever thought of that?” She looks away from me to Mom.

“The truth is hard to figure out,” she says, wrinkling her eyebrows. She starts waving. “Good-bye, Mrs. Ramirez, and everyone else!” she says brightly. “Ad…iooos amigos! Good luck, have a safe trip. Oh, and Mrs. Ramirez, don't forget my cousin, Robert O'Connor! Stay in touch, Michael!” Holly gives him a thumbs-up. She turns to the camera. “This is News Channel 5 with an update on the Ramirezes as they go cross-country on their way to the Vietnam Wall after receiving $92,000 from the U.S. government. This was due to the government's failure to award the full amount of money in 1968 for the death of their loved one, Sgt. Jesse A. Ramirez. The government's mistake has made it possible for the Ramirez family to make the trip to the Vietnam Wall. The family has its own web site, www dot jramirez68 dot com.” She smiles into the camera and continues narrating as we finish loading up.

I check with Priscilla, Paul, and Willy to make sure they have the
details of the route correct. Michael's made copies of the map with the route outlined for them. Manuel starts the motor, and my mother is still asking about Gates. The Guadalupanas make the sign of the cross over themselves, breathing prayers for our safety, acclaiming St. Christopher, the saint for travelers. I wonder if Chris Montez was named after him. Elsa runs up to my open window with Marisol in her arms. She gives me a kiss on the cheek and our faces touch. There are tears.

We start moving toward the freeway north to Flagstaff. I watch Elsa, Julio, Marisol, and Ray standing on the sidewalk. Ray's holding Marisol now and he's waving her little hand up and down, saying good-bye. The neighbors are all clapping, waving.

We're circling around the Central Park projects, the library, the park, another Chinese store, a Southwest Market, St. Anthony's Church. A few cars are parked along the side of the street in front of the church. Early morning mass is going on, the doors are open wide. I catch a glimpse of the altar and the huge statue of St. Anthony in the middle. I look back at Mom and her lips are whispering prayers, not songs.

Nana's image comes to my mind. She walks ahead of all the women, long strides leading them to the white, shining altar. She's hiding in the earth now next to Jesse. Father Ramon died five years ago in an old folks' home for priests. Father Clemente is now the pastor. The old Guadalupanas make the sign of the cross and implore the blessings of La Virgen de Guadalupe as we pass the church.

An old woman, holding on to a child's hand, walks down a twisted alley littered with glass. The sunlight bouncing off the glass is a carpet of diamonds under their feet. I half expect to see Tortuga come out of one of the Freeman Project apartments in an army fatigue jacket, hunting down his next bottle of wine. Mom told me he's on disability now and that his son, Mauricio, fell in love with a girl who only weighs ninety pounds. The girl made Mauricio lose over two hundred pounds, and now they're married. Mom says the girl steams everything and cooks like the Chinese to keep Mauricio slim.

It's too early for children to be playing in the streets. A few old men sit out in chairs drinking café con leche. They wave to us as we pass by. More neighbors come out to the sidewalks, sensing something important going by. Sunday morning in El Cielito is not the same, the air is different somehow, charged by an invisible current.

The ridge of the South Mountains is to my left, purple, blue in the distance. Bougainvillea vines and roses are blooming everywhere. Tamarisk trees and mulberries are in full leaf along the street, streets La
Llorona left when she found out about Vietnam. I look South to El Rio Salado to Don Florencío's old shack and see nothing, not even the tip of the twisted hill he lived close to. I make the sign of the cross over myself. Manuel sees me and puts his hand on my arm. I glimpse his eyes through his glasses, afraid he'll see the pain in mine.

The U.S. flags and Mexican flags on our vans are flapping in the wind, keeping time to the U.S. flag and Chinese flag on the Nissan Maxima. The old women are crying. I turn around and look out through the rear window and see the two vehicles in single file. Paul, Donna, Priscilla and the boys, Willy and Susie with the News Channel 5 Van trailing us, shooting its last footage. By the time we drive onto Central Avenue, other cars have joined us. Chevies, Fords, two pick-ups, a Blazer carrying Irene's kids, the Ruizes, the Valdezes, the shiftless renters, Blanche and Betty, Elsa, Julio, Marisol, and Ray. Without knowing it, we have made our own procession.

As we make the stoplight before heading down the Black Canyon Freeway, I hear a car honking. I put down the window on my side to get a better look. It's the same gray, rusty Monte Carlo I saw at Penny's Pool Hall. I see broad shoulders in the driver's seat and the profile of a woman. Erica's driving. Gates jumps out with a suitcase in one hand before the light changes to green and gets into Willy's car. Suddenly, I like Erica and don't mind if she fights like a man. My mother lifts her hands up to Heaven…. “Gracias, a Dios. Thanks be to God! I knew he would answer my prayer.” Erica starts honking again as we climb onto the freeway ramp. Other cars join in, then horns start blaring on all sides from drivers who don't even know us. It's a noisy tribute for El Cielito's Chicano soldier.

 

• W
E'RE PILGRIMS OF
A
ZTLÁN
, heading east, following the rising sun, on our own quest, una manda, searching out an invisible trek in a maze of voices calling, prayers, magical words, singsong chants of the ancient world, good wishes, broken promises, pain, traveling through the whiteness of Aztlán. My mother, the beginning of it all, is blind to all she's done. We're pilgrims on a journey to America's wailing wall. Only faith will get us there.

W
e stop at a rest area close to Flagstaff, in the middle of the Coconino National Forest. The bathrooms are brick structures with toilets that really flush. I walk around a huge pine tree, measuring its rough circumference with my hands, smelling the bark, hoping to catch a whiff of resin, copal for Don Florencío's fire. The kids start running around, punching each other, shouting. Other Sunday picnickers sit on wooden tables, preparing food, drinking coffee. The sun is moving to the center of the world, making the pine trees' shadows lean closer to their trunks. My lungs respond to the sweet mountain air. Manuel and I walk up a trail that leads into the forest.

An elderly couple approach us, smiling. The man has his arm around his wife. He's helping her walk over the uneven ground. She's reaching out, one thin arm extended in front of her, as if she's walking on ice.

“Are you folks headed for the Vietnam Wall?” the man asks.

“Yes, we are.”

“I saw the signs on the window of the van.”

“My nephew's idea.”

“I had a son who served in Vietnam—James Kinney. He made it through, thank God. He's not on the Wall.”

“He was lucky. My brother wasn't so lucky. He was killed in 1968.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“It's sad,” the woman says. “All the boys killed over there.” She looks at me and I know she wants to cry. “Is that your mother over there?” She points to Mom, sitting with Irene at a picnic table.

“Yes, it is. That's why we're on the road. Mom made a promise to touch my brother's name on the Vietnam Wall.”

“And all these other people?”

“Family and friends,” Manuel says.

She looks around at everyone. “This is wonderful. Have a safe trip.” She leans close to her husband, and her action reminds me of the time Dad picked up Mom in his arms at the airport after Jesse's plane took off.

“She's been ill,” he says. “But she's a trouper, aren't you, sweetheart?”

She nods. “We'll be in touch with you. Barry will take down the web address.”

“Barry and Eleanor Kinney. We'll be in touch,” her husband says, and they walk away.

“Hey, Manuel, we're getting famous.”

“Michael was right. A little publicity is good for us.”

I stand still and close my eyes. “Breathe in the air, Manuel.” I'm taking in deep, piny breaths. “Jesse would have loved this!” I look up. Manuel is staring up at the trees.

“There's lots of space between them. It doesn't look that way from the road.”

“What?”

“The spaces between the trees. Some of the trees are burned.”

“Who cares? Just smell the woods. Can't you feel the energy? Everything's alive!”

Manuel's staring at me. “You're so beautiful, Teresa. You look like a forest nymph.”

“A Chicana forest nymph? Never heard of one!” We both start laughing.

Priscilla walks up to us. “Something I should know about?”

“We're laughing about forest nymphs,” says Manuel.

“Getting into the spirit of things, are you? And I do mean
spirit
. All these voices calling Mom. What is this, a moving seance? What did the voices tell Mom? She doesn't know and neither do you, Teresa. I don't believe the dead talk to us.”

“Who knows what the dead do?” I tell her. “The real question is, are they really dead, or just out of their bodies, and living somewhere else?”

“This is getting real spooky. Has it hit you that we're going across the country to prove Mom right?”

“Mom doesn't need anybody to prove her right. She believes anyway.”

“Yeah, and now that I remember, you're a little weird yourself, chasing that old man over by La Cueva del Diablo.”

Priscilla's wearing sunglasses. I see myself reflected in one lens, a distorted shadowy image.

“You wouldn't be saying that if you knew Don Florencío like Jesse and I did.”

“People said he was a drunk! Smoked stuff he grew in his own backyard. He was nothing but an old Indian hippie. He should have set up shop in San Francisco, with your little boyfriend from next door, what was his name? Ricky Navarro. Don't you remember? Ricky joined a hippie commune.”

“I never saw Don Florencío drunk. And if you're talking about peyote, you're crazy, I never saw anything but tobacco. He respected what nature gave him. And as far as Ricky's concerned…”

“Don't get so touchy. Touchy, isn't she, Manuel?”

“She can get a little testy sometimes.”

“Whose side are you on?”

Manuel raises his hands, shrugs his shoulders. “Can't win between sisters, I better keep my mouth shut.”

“How do you know Ricky Navarro turned into a hippie? He left town, that's all we know.”

“Ricky was a pothead, an LSD freak, a total washout! Don't you remember all the rumors?” Priscilla starts to walk away.

“Just like you to say things, throw daggers, then walk away! Don't even start me on your men!”

My heart is pounding. I see the Guadalupanas sitting at a picnic table with the twins. Gates is smoking a cigarette, standing under a pine tree with Willy and Susie. I lower my voice. “Talk to me about your latest, Priscilla. He looks seedy to me. Isn't his picture over at the post office?”

Priscilla yanks her sunglasses off. She glares at me, her body stiffening. “You can't touch him, Teresa, and that's what bothers you! You always think you have power over men, all men—my men!”

“Que pasa?” my mother is standing, leaning on her cane.

“They're fighting, Nana,” Lisa says.

“No, mija,” she tells me. “Don't fight!”

“Don't think I'm on this trip because I want to be!” Priscilla yells over her shoulder. “If Mom doesn't make it, neither will you, I swear it!”

I look at Manuel. “Did you hear her? Threatening my life. There's a law against that! Blaming me for all this!”

Priscilla's already in the van. Paul and Donna show up with the boys. Cisco is wrestling with Michael, holding both hands behind his back. After traveling only a few hours, they're acting like brothers.

“Look Mom, chicken wings!” he yells.

“Leave him alone!” Priscilla shouts. She jumps out of the van and races toward Cisco, grabbing his arm.

“It's a wrestling move, Tía,” Cisco says. “I'm gonna make him a tough guy.”

“Not in my lifetime!”

“We're playing,” Michael says.

Angelo grabs Cisco around the waist. “He's teaching us how to wrestle, Mom.”

“Both of you shut up and get into the van!”

“Don't push my kid around, Priscilla,” Paul says. “I can stand up for my own.”

“You stay out of this, you loser! Where were you when Michael was a baby and needed you? Where were you when I hauled him around to all his dental appointments? Now you're back, and you want everything your way—well, it's not that easy!”

“It's OK, Tía,” Michael says. “Dad just broke his own record. He's never defended me before.”

Mom and Irene shuffle up to me, leaning on each other for support.

“Ya, behave yourselves, all of you! Look, everybody is watching us,” says Irene.

“They'll say we're a bunch of Mexicans who can't do anything right,” Mom adds.

“They probably think we're a delegation from the United Nations,” Paul says.

My mother is distraught, her arm trembling from the effort of holding herself up on her cane.

“It's OK, Mom, don't get so upset. Priscilla has a big mouth, she doesn't really mean what she says.”

“Ay, why can't you love each other? If Jesse was here he would know what to do.”

“There you go again with Jesse!” Paul says. “Jesse this, Jesse that. Nobody can control these two, much less somebody who died thirty years ago!”

“Que nervio!” Irene says. “How dare you talk that way to your mother!”

Paul opens his mouth. “Don't say another word,” I tell him. He turns away. I watch his back. One shoulder is slumped at an angle like Dad's. He's rummaging through his pocket for the car keys.

Donna wraps her arm around Mom. “Let me help you to the van, Alicia. Don't even think about all this. We'll be in Albuquerque soon.”

“You ain't seen nothing, Mrs. Ramirez,” Gates says, trying to soothe Mom. “My sisters used to run after each other with scissors and hatchets. And I don't even want to tell you about Erica, my ex-wife, you saw her today in the car. That big lady? She can crack somebody's head in two.”

“Ay, Dios mio!”

“Sisters always fight,” says Willy. “I have four and they almost started a fire in the back of the store. Remember the house we used to live in behind the store? None of them wanted to get up and turn off the stove.”

“Your poor father. I know how much he loved his store.”

“I never fought with my sisters,” Susie says proudly.

“You're an exception!” says Willy. He takes his wife's picture, to record the “exception” for posterity.

Everybody is trying to make things right for Mom. I look at my watch and see it's time for her medications, Lipitor that helps circulate blood through her arteries, prescription ibuprofen for the pain, and another pill to regulate her blood pressure. Suddenly, I feel cooped up, as if the forest is turning in on me. The Wall seems a million miles away. How will we survive all this, and what if Mom dies before she gets there?

Manuel walks up to me. “Medication time?”

“Yeah, I gotta keep all these medications in order.” I start counting out the pills.

“You're doing a good job.” He pauses. “But you know what?”

“What?”

“You were pretty rough on Priscilla.”

“I can't believe you just said that! Didn't you hear her threaten me?”

“She didn't mean it. She talks tough, but it's just because she's afraid.”

“So what are you, Manuel? Her therapist? Priscilla doesn't let anybody get close to her.”

“That's why—because she's afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of losing, of not being what people expect her to be.”

“And you know about that, do you?”

“I'm an expert on it.”

“Gee, didn't know the two of you had so much in common.”

Manuel and I get into the van and avoid looking at each other. Priscilla decides to ride with Willy and Susie to avoid Paul. Lisa pours water for Mom in a paper cup so she can take her pills. The cars start up again, and we begin climbing higher into alpine country. My mother is gasping for breath. The atmosphere is too thin. I'm looking nervously at my watch, to see how much longer before we get into New Mexico, closer to Chris's house.

“She'll be all right. We're almost out of the mountains,” Manuel says. “How you feeling, Doña?”

“Never better, mijo, even though my children don't respect each other. No, they would rather fight. They forgot how to be a family. What is life without la familia?”

Manuel smiles, uncertainly. He understands better than all of us. He's Casper disappearing over the horizon in boxcars that never took him where he wanted to go, which was home, a real home, to a real family.

The blue-green of the forest is so rich I see spots of green when I'm not looking at the trees. Everyone's quiet. We pass by Montezuma Castle, old Indian ruins pressed into the side of a mountain, an ancient high-rise. Arizona is amazing. Huge saguaros grow next to spiny ocotillo and palo verde trees not too many miles from giant pine trees, maple, and aspen, and mountains capped with snow in winter. We have exited the heat of Phoenix, with temperatures that rise so high in the summertime you can fry an egg on the sidewalk. The sky is a perfect blue dome, cloudless, the day bright with sunshine, yet everything inside me has turned black. My mind is racing with things I'd like to say to Priscilla, hard things I've held inside me for a long time. I'm afraid when I look back and see my mother's ashen face, afraid of Priscilla's words. I want the trip to be over, and my mother headed safely back home. We're journeying to the Wall to touch Jesse's name. Does it matter anymore? Yet my fingers ache, anticipating the letters of his name. I've smoothed them down a hundred times in my mind, smoothed down his face in my memory, too, made everything fit into my thoughts, a flesh-and-blood jigsaw puzzle, but the pieces keep shifting and changing shapes the closer we get to the Wall.

 

• I
T'S ASSUMED THAT
when people travel together they will love and hate each other, be amused, be resistant, be irritable, show their bad sides,
make excuses for not answering when spoken to, get drowsy and carsick and want to go back home. How much of this can we bear? Irene rests one leg on Mom's lap, and Mom rubs the painful varicose veins gently. Mom dozes on Irene's shoulder part of the way, while Lisa and Lilly fight over CDs. The other two cars are still following us, so I guess nobody has decided to go back home. Manuel surprised me by sticking up for Priscilla. Really, I didn't think he had it in him. Maybe I am like Priscilla says, wanting power over men, needing them to seem weak and limp, wanting to keep them home where my father should have been.

I look at Mom and wonder what it takes to keep a man home. She couldn't keep my dad. He was restless, beset with a wandering eye, looking for a new landscape to inhabit. Landscapes are changing in front of my eyes as we move from mountains to plateaus to flatland. In the distance, clouds hang low over purple, misty mountain peaks as we make our way to Gallup, New Mexico. Maybe I'm more like my dad. I need to have a landscape that's changing or changeable, moving, if nothing else.

La manda, my mother's promise, is changing our landscapes forever. It's suffering in motion. We're carrying our burdens on our backs as our Indian ancestors did, adjusting the weight every once in a while to make ourselves feel better. Suffering is our map, it's why we're on the road. Men and women in pain stand close to Christ, the man of sorrows; every procession at St. Anthony's taught us that. We wouldn't be on the road if it weren't for war and suffering. We're part of some unearthly plan to balance the scales of suffering, to release a spring in our souls that will free us from the fear of suffering.