Names on a Map

  er in the kitchen, Xochil in her room, and my father back to

  the telephone. I imagine he was calling relatives and friends, and anybody else he felt he needed to notify. He was taking care of business. Business was what he was good at.

  I walked into the backyard and thought that maybe now

  would be a good time to pick up smoking. It would have given

  me something to do. I don’t know how long I loitered there, sniff-ing the air like a dog that had nothing else to do. Finally, I walked

  charl ie l 207

  back into the house. I found my mother in the kitchen, writing in her journal. I remember turning on the light because the sun had gone down and there was nothing but dark in the room.

  Mom wasn’t writing, though she had a pen in her hand. She had

  written a sentence on a blank page of her journal. She was sitting there, staring at her words. She looked at me, giving up her struggle with words. She seemed dazed, stunned, and it seemed

  as though she didn’t recognize me. That scared me. I had never seen her disoriented, not ever. She had always had a way about her, never afraid and always sure of where she was and where she was going. It was like she had a map inside her. She must have read something in my face. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, “it’s just me.” And just like that, she was back, my mother.

  “Are you sad?” I asked.

  “Come here,” she said.

  I sat next to her at the kitchen table. She looked into my eyes.

  “What do you remember about her?”

  “She was always sick.”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “Arthritis. The kind that bends your bones as if they were

  pieces of plastic.”

  I nodded. “It hurt her.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why she always looked sad.”

  “Yes.”

  “I liked her laugh.”

  “Me, too, amor.” And then she kissed me. A sad kiss. Kisses could be sad. “Will you tell your father we need ice and more coffee? Your uncles and aunts will be coming.”

  I kissed her back. She smelled faintly of jasmine. She always

  did. Only the people who were close to her ever noticed she wore perfume. “Mom? Are you okay?”

  208 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Grief takes you away. But it always brings you back.”

  I believed her. Later I would come to think that when grief

  took you away, it never brought you back to the same place. There was no such thing as a return. But that was later.

  At that moment, I believed her. I believed her completely.

  With all my boy heart.

  I remember, too, how sad Xochil was that afternoon. I kept

  returning to her face, her tears, unbearable, sad. Sad, sad, sad.

  And not just because she loved and adored and worshipped my

  grandmother. It came to me that she’d come home crying that

  afternoon and she hadn’t known anything about Grandma Rosie.

  I knew it had something to do with her and Jack Evans. I never really liked that Jack Evans. No, that’s not true. I’m already revising what I felt. Well, we do that, don’t we? No, I liked him.

  He was fine. He was this clean-cut all-American boy who be-

  lieved everything they told him about being a man, about being an American, about girls and what they were like and what they should be. He was a decent and sincere guy who never learned

  how to question anything. That’s what I liked about him. He

  thought the world was better than it was. He didn’t think the

  world needed changing. In a way, he was an innocent. But Xochil wasn’t capable of considering those qualities a virtue. Her mind was tough and sharp and she was determined to live her life using that weapon. She questioned everything—including herself. Like my father, Jack Evans was the kind of man who would spend his

  entire life living by the rules he inherited. Xochil would live her life raging against those same rules.

  Jack and Xochil weren’t a good match. They both knew it. Or

  at least Xochil knew it. But knowing something doesn’t mean you have power over it.

  And the problem with being eighteen is that the body begins

  charl ie l 209

  to want. And I think something in Xochil’s body ached for something in Jack’s body. Their bodies trumped their minds. I was a witness. I was there when they fell in love. I saw it happen. Right there on our front porch. The porch. That’s where everything

  happened.

  “ You’re staring at me.” She combed her hair with her fingers.

  “I’m not. I’m just looking.”

  “Take a picture, Jack Evans.”

  “I don’t have a camera.”

  “Too bad.” She rocked herself more deliberately on the old rocking chair. “Gustavo’s not here.”

  “How do you know I came to see Gustavo?”

  “Well, you’re friends aren’t you?”

  “ Yeah, we’re friends, but—”

  “But what?”

  “Maybe I came to see you.”

  “Maybe you’re full of shit.”

  “Maybe I am. But maybe you like me.”

  She looked away.

  “I know you like me. I can feel it. Last week, when we were playing basketball in the park, you were watching me.”

  “What you felt was the wind.”

  “The wind?”

  “It was windy that day.”

  He smiled. “Sure.”

  “I was watching my brother. He’s a good player. Better than you.”

  “ Yes. But not by much.”

  “ You’re a conceited boy.”

  “Will you go to the prom with me?”

  “No.”

  “ You don’t want to think about it?”

  “Some things aren’t worth thinking about.”

  210 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p That’s when he walked right up to her, bent down, and kissed

  her. And she kissed him right back. Nobody knew. It was all very private at first. Then everybody knew—though nobody talked

  about it. It was probably love. It’s hard to say. They were young.

  And I was even younger. I didn’t understand everything I saw. Just because you witness something doesn’t mean you understand it.

  adam

  Da Nang, Vietnam

  You are tired of remembering. But the rain will not let you sleep and you do not want to think of how cold you are, how wet you

  are, how you are beginning to believe that your country and your God have abandoned you. You do not want to curse the rain because the rain is not human, has no ears to hear you.

  You do not want to curse the war because it is as useless to

  curse the war as it is to curse the monsoons.

  You think of Conrad García, who was the purest man you

  ever met. You remember how tall he was and thin and how ev-

  erybody thought he looked like St. Francis.

  You remember hating him. You remember how you taunted

  him, calling him “the priest.”

  You remember how his friend Gustavo threatened to send

  you to heaven sooner than you’d expected.

  You remember striking the first blow.

  You watched as Gustavo hit the ground. As you were about

  212 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p to kick him to make sure he’d never threaten you again, you feel Gustavo grabbing your leg and twisting it. You see yourself fall to the ground gracelessly, him on top of you about to put his fist through your face.

  You hear Conrad’s voice interrupting the intimacy of the fight between you and Gustavo. “Why are you doing this?” He repeats

  his question. “Why are you doing this?” He dema
nds an answer.

  He looks into your face. Then looks at Gustavo. “Why do you do these things to each other?”

  Neither you nor Gustavo have an answer.

  You want to strike out at Conrad, tell him to shut up. You

  want to tell him that you and Gustavo are just living. You want to tell him that men want to live. That is your answer. This is what you want to say to him.

  You wonder why you still feel the shame—and feel it even

  now.

  You understand a guy like Gustavo. He is just like you. But

  you wonder about men like Conrad, wonder what they are made

  of, wonder why they have no appetite or patience for the way

  things are. “Men hurt each other, Conrad, don’t you know that?”

  You do not hear yourself whispering to the ghosts of your

  past. You do not hear the rain punishing the land, the wind ripping at the leaves of every tree.

  xo ch i l

  Those sober, sober men in neatly pressed black suits, all of them with name tags and all of them wearing sunglasses, they were

  taking away my grandmother’s body. An escort service for the

  dead.

  I found myself on the porch, a spectator.

  And then it happened. Like everything else, it happened in

  an instant. My mother raced out the door. I don’t remember what she was screaming, such a strange and foreign thing, to hear those sounds emanating from my mother, she who was always in control of her emotions. She’d never yelled, not once, not at me, not at Gustavo, not at my father. But in an instant of grief, she was transformed, became a frightening animal that could have killed.

  The funeral director was no match for her. I thought she’d tear him apart. I never knew she had that kind of rage inside her.

  But I was so like her. An animal watching, waiting to leap.

  And that’s just what I did.

  214 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p It wasn’t as if I thought about what I was doing. It was a

  reflex. Instinct. I don’t know. I suppose I just wasn’t any good at being a spectator. I found myself running after her, grabbing her, holding her, pushing her head against me as I rocked and rocked her. I wasn’t going to let her go until I calmed her back to sanity.

  It was the most natural thing in the world.

  Up to that moment, I had talked myself into believing that

  rape had transformed me into a woman. But rape did not make me a woman. Holding my mother as she sobbed, feeling her grief pour out of her. That is what made me a woman.

  g us t avo

  There was a long line of people passing the toll booth. He

  thought of the line of men who had appeared behind him when

  he’d gone to get his physical, all of them young, quiet, as if speech had been drained out of them and they had been rendered inarticulate, all of them with strained looks on their faces, looks of apprehension that made them appear suddenly older, more passive. But the looks here on the bridge were nothing like that. Not like that at all. The faces were relaxed, happy, people chattering in English and Spanish, fishing out the two cents to get across from pockets and purses; there was an eager energy in the movements of everyone around him.

  He paid his two pennies at the window and walked across the

  bridge, ignoring the beggars with twisted arms or legs, ignoring the Tahurumaran women holding children in one arm and holding out the other for the spare change any stranger would bother to place there, almost as if it wasn’t a hand at all, but a slot, a ma-

  216 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p chine that no longer felt anything, not even the warm coins that were placed there. He ignored the children selling Chiclets and piñatas and images of a bloodied God on a cross, even ignored

  the darkening sky, clouds beginning to move in. Maybe a storm.

  Storms came—even after perfect breezeless days. On another day, he would’ve smelled the approaching rain, might have smiled at the prospect of a downpour, sweet rain. Sweet, sweet rain.

  He continued walking down Avenida Juárez, the litter of the

  parade lining the crowded street and even more crowded side-

  walk. He smiled, remembering what day it was, el diez y seis.

  It was then he noticed how the streets were overflowing with

  vendors selling tacos, burritos, children’s toys, aguas frescas, elotes, along with the usual cigarette vendors. He stopped, bought two packs of Marlboros. Ten cents a pack. American cigarettes, un-taxed. He gave the man a quarter and waved the change away .

  “¡Que viva Mexico!” the man said, not quite shouting it. Happy, the vendor, content with his job and the day, the faint smell of beer on his breath. Gustavo shoved a pack in his shirt pocket and opened the other, tearing open the foil. He took out a cigarette.

  He lit it, looked around at the crowded street, kept walking. As he passed a taxi, the man gestured to him. “You want girl?” The cab drivers, they didn’t really know English. They memorized

  lines, You want girl? Boy? Sex? You want something better than sex?

  That meant drugs. They could get you anything, the cab drivers.

  They could take you places.

  He grinned, almost embarrassed, shook his head, and kept

  walking. He’d been to la Calle Mariscal, had almost gotten up

  the nerve to get himself laid. He’d changed his mind. “Why pay for it?” he’d told himself. But he’d been scared. He didn’t know of what. Maybe of himself. Maybe of the prostitutes. He hadn’t been scared with the other girls he’d been with. But that was different.

  He’d known the girls, had studied them, kissed them—and they

  had studied him. These women, well, they were women. And

  g us t avo l 217

  they reminded him that he was only a boy instead of the man he wanted to be. And anyway, the whole scene had seemed cheap to

  him. Cheap and sad as hell.

  He laughed nervously to himself, walked another half block,

  and made his way into the Kentucky Club. He pushed past the

  crowd that stood around the entryway and found an empty stool

  at the back of the bar. He finished his cigarette. Then lit another.

  He sucked in the smoke, the goodness of it, the way it almost

  hurt when he took the nicotine into his desperate lungs, the way his whole body came alive with whatever the hell was in them.

  After a few drags, he felt calmer, and that ugly thing that

  Angel had brought out in him began to burrow itself back into

  that place inside him where it slept. He wished to God that angry animal would go to sleep forever. But that animal would wake up again. He knew it would. Someday, it would wake up growling.

  Happy. Go hunting. Kill.

  He tried to think of something good. He thought of Conrad.

  I just told them that I would never carry a gun. I told them I would never kill another human being. That’s what I told them. Conrad.

  He hoped to God—even if he didn’t believe in God—he hoped

  to God that the cruel and pitiless and brutal world of men in

  the military would leave him alone, leave Conrad pure—him and

  Charlie. He raised his beer to them, to Conrad and Charlie, to them who lived so close to that word peace. Yeah, sure, to them.

  He ordered another. Nothing felt so bad after a few Tecates.

  xo ch i l . lourde s .

  Tell me why my children love these steps.”

  Xochil turned her head at the sound of her mother’s voice.

  “Because they lead to heaven.” She patted the cement floor of the porch and motioned for her to come and sit. When she felt her

  mother next to her, Xochil placed her head on her shoulder. They sat there for a moment, quiet, still.

  Xochil listened to the sound of the house full of people, the

  voices, almost li
ke a song. She closed her eyes and took in her mother’s smell. “You can see everything from here,” she whispered, “the sky, the neighborhood, everything.”

  “You can’t see Paris.”

  “I don’t care about Paris.”

  “Your grandmother loved Paris. It’s where she met your

  grandfather.”

  “I loved hearing her tell that story, that thing in her voice.”

  xo ch i l . lourde s . l 219

  She looked straight into her mother’s face. “But I still don’t care about Paris.”

  “But you care about a boy named Jack.”

  “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want him in my head.”

  “Maybe it’s too late for that.”

  “I’m eighteen years old. It’s not too late for anything.”

  “You’re a wise girl, aren’t you? You talk like you’re thirty.”

  “I’m probably older than that.”

  “Yes, I think you are. You scare me sometimes.”

  “I want people to take me seriously.”

  “The whole world takes you seriously, Xochil.”

  “Everyone but Jack.”

  “Oh, he takes you seriously.”

  “Mom, you don’t know that.”

  “I’ve seen him look at you.”

  “It’s a guy thing. His looking at me is just a reflex.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means the guy has a body, Mom. It doesn’t mean he has

  a brain.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re smiling. You’re laughing at me.”

  “Not really.”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Well, maybe.” She took her daughter’s hand and squeezed

  it. “I scared you today, didn’t I? I scared everyone. I think I even scared myself.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “I’ve never—grief—grief, Xochil, it can steal your mind if you let your guard down.”

  “I thought you were beautiful.”

  220 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p

  “And frightening.”

  “Yes.” Xochil smiled. “Terrifying.”

  “Mad as the empress Carlotta.”

  “Stop it, Mom.” They burst out laughing, tears running down

  their faces. When they finally stopped, they listened to the laughter coming from inside the house.