She pulled on her nightgown and crawled into bed very slowly. It took real control to get in without bouncing the mattress. Big Angel was sweet and friendly all day long…unless you bounced him unexpectedly or bumped into him. Then he’d snap. Everyone cried a little when he shouted, “You idiot!”
Her jaws hurt from clenching her teeth. One knee, then the other. Popping. She grimaced.
She got her bottom settled and laid her head down very slowly. She slept on the left side of the bed. He was on the side with the little table—all his pill bottles there within reach, looking like the model of a futuristic city. Plastic skyscrapers loaded with colorful pills. Tomorrow, she was thinking. Diosito lindo, get me through tomorrow.
When her head sank to her pillow, he said, “Flaca, has everyone gone home?”
Damn it!
“Flaco! I thought you were asleep.”
“I am asleep,” he said. “But I watch you even when I’m dreaming.”
He had been saying strange things for a while now. He’d always said them. He was a genius. Geniuses said crazy things. But he was even stranger now, carrying on like some brujo out in the wilderness. He had told Minnie, “Rivers believe in God.” What the hell was that supposed to mean? He had told poor Lalo, “Birds have always known the language of the dead.”
Over breakfast one morning, he had looked at her and said, “Flaca, the universe can fit inside an egg.” Mildly, because she didn’t know how to handle these outbursts without inflaming them, she’d said, “Oh really, Flaco?” “Yes. But the hen that sits on this egg must be so big we can’t see her. I wonder what will hatch when the universe cracks open.” She’d replied, “How nice,” while silently crying out to God and the Virgin to help her.
“Flaca,” he said brightly, as if they were at lunch on a summer’s day.
“Sí?”
“Do you remember when we met?”
“How could I forget? Go to sleep.”
“And then I didn’t see you for a year.”
“Yes.”
“But then I saw you at the movies.”
“I know, Flaco. I was there. Go to sleep.”
“It was that nasty little theater we called ‘Las Pulgas.’”
“Yes. You got fleas in there. It was filthy.”
“We saw that doll people movie. You were in the row in front of me.”
“Puppet people, Flaco. I still have nightmares.”
“I bought you a Pepsi-Cola.”
“A 7UP, Flaco. You called it ‘un siete-oop.’”
They laughed.
“And then,” he said.
“Stop.”
“On the beach.”
“Cochino!” She put her hands over her face and groaned.
“You had a white dress. And you lay on the sand. And I rubbed your back.”
“Oye, Angel! Enough!”
“You were lying on my jacket. And as I rubbed your back, your skirt rose.”
“Dios!”
“You shook. I saw your hands dig into the sand.”
“Ay.”
He’d been seventeen, and she sixteen.
That night, the moon was a curl of God’s fingernail. A group of kids from the secundaria had lit a bonfire a quarter kilometer away. The water was black, with glowing white foam and a long highway of silver coins tossed across the swells by the light above. It started with a kiss. Her tongue invaded his mouth. It was slender and cold and tasted of the strawberry juice they had just bought on the malecón. Big Angel understood right away: this tongue thing. She knew about the world.
At first, he knelt beside her. Water was coming out of the sand and soaking his trouser knees. He had not put his hands on a girl’s back before. He was hypnotized by the feeling of her tight shoulders and the way they relaxed under his hands. And her sighs. How her ribs could be felt through the exquisite pliancy of her flesh. Her heat radiating through the cotton. The straps of her brassiere, crossing her back. And the slight swellings on the sides, where her breasts began. He trembled just slightly, as if he had carried very heavy bundles down a long road.
And he suddenly found himself straddling the backs of her legs without quite knowing how he got there. He leaned into her. Smelling her hair and her perfume. Feeling the alarming heat of her thighs through the legs of his pants. And then, that white dress, all one piece, rising farther. Was that another scent? His throat hurt and his jaw ached from clenching it so tightly. He looked down and watched the skirt creep up the backs of her legs. He could not stop. He leaned forward and stared. She knew he was looking—her thighs tightened and she shivered—and he knew without knowing what was happening between them. Then, the double curve of her bare bottom had peeked at him.
“And I saw your nalgas.”
She laughed, deep in her throat. Her nasty laugh.
And his hands had slid up her thighs and encountered her. She jumped and sighed, and he drew breath. Carefully moved his fingers into that wet heat, afraid he might overstep his bounds, face burning, hands shaking. She was like an ocean there.
“I have a little fountain,” she said. “For you.”
His own pants were drenched. He didn’t know what was happening. Did this happen to men? He was worried about hiding it. Then he forgot to care.
For the rest of his life, that would remain his favorite moment.
They lay there, at once in their bed and upon that old warm beach. She put her head close to his shoulder.
“And then what?” she said.
“You were my first.”
“Ay! What an angel.”
He touched her face. “I kissed your bottom!”
Proud of himself, he crossed his arms behind his head. The cool tremble of her cinnamon curve. The dangerous shadow between her nalgas. The sweet scent of her back and skin. The tang of her like liquor swimming in his limbs and head. His shaking hands. He wanted to smoke a Pall Mall.
After a while, she said, “That wasn’t all you did.”
That comfortable old silence spread between them, as warm and luxurious as a well-fed cat.
“I am tired,” he said.
She patted him softly. “Go to sleep,” she said.
“I astral project,” he told her. “So I don’t get any rest.”
“Ah, cabrón!” she said.
“I can leave my body and walk around.”
“Que qué!” she said. It was as if she could hear him smiling in the dark.
“I don’t need a wheelchair for doing that, Flaca.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve gone crazy. First my nalgas? Then leaving your body? Stop talking crazy.”
“Kissing your nalgas made me leave my body,” he said.
“I’m warning you…”
“Little Angel got to MaryLú’s house all right. I saw him just now. He’s going to sleep on her couch.”
“You scare me.”
“I’m not crazy,” he said. “Just looking around so I can see what’s going on. So I’ll know where my soul will go when I’m finished here.”
The breath she took shuddered in her chest. “Well, don’t look in my sister’s bathroom.”
He chuckled. “I can’t visit La Gloriosa in the bubble bath?”
“No!” she said.
They lay on their backs, a hundred foggy scenes in the dark hovering over them.
“A good life,” he said.
She took his hand. “Because of you, Angel.”
“Because of you, Perla.”
“We did it together.”
He yawned. “Eso sí,” he said and turned to her in the dark. “But I am tired now.”
“Sleep,” she said.
“More tired than that.”
There was a long pause. “Flaco, no.”
“It might be time, mi amor.”
“No. No.”
“My work is done, Flaca. Our children are grown. I think I am done.”
“Angel. No digas eso.” She scolded him like his mother used to. “You??
?re talking like a crazy man again. We have grandchildren! Your work is not done! What about me?”
He sighed, squeezed her hand.
“Don’t make me mad,” she said.
“Or what?”
“I’ll spank you with my slipper.” La chancla.
“That might be nice,” he said.
He smiled; she felt it.
After a moment, she said, “Flaco? You can’t really see my sister naked, can you?”
But he was already snoring.
* * *
10:30 p.m.
Little Angel was stretched out on MaryLú’s couch. She wouldn’t hear of him sleeping at the hotel. Even though he’d left all his stuff in his perfectly good, air-conditioned room. She had given him a toothbrush of his own and a towel. She had even bought him a package of boxers and a nice Bob Dylan T-shirt at Target. Amphetamine 1965 Dylan, with a harmonica, Wayfarers, and shock hair. She thought he needed a haircut.
Her kids were in L.A. Going to college. Starting businesses. Giving her grandchildren. Spreading the seed.
Her couch wasn’t so bad. Well, it wasn’t really her couch—it was her mother’s couch. That astounding América. Little Angel thought of her often and started to laugh almost every time. Nobody else thought she was all that funny. But they hadn’t seen what he and Big Angel had seen.
Sometimes, when thing were dull, one or the other of them would say, “Parrot.” The others could not understand what was so damned funny. They asked over and over, and neither brother would tell. It had become some kind of sacred secret, this memory. Only for them. Little Angel actually considered telling MaryLú about it but decided this was not the time. Later.
But he was busting to tell it now. Everything was shifting. Delineations of a new paradigm in transborder familial dynamics: a theorem.
* * *
MaryLú had been living with the old woman for three years, caring for her. After her divorce, she hadn’t really been able to afford her own place. Yes, it was embarrassing at sixty-nine to camp out at Mamá’s house. But nobody else had been free to do it. God truly had his own ways of arranging things.
“Hermanita,” Little Angel said.
She loved to be treated by him as if she were a young girl, fresh in her teens.
“Brrotherr,” she replied.
“How is this situation all going to work out?” He opened his hands in the air.
She sat on a kitchen chair and ate peanut M&M’s from a small bowl in her lap. La Gloriosa kept trying to get her to come to the gym with her. She had been on a diet for forty years. Well, Gloriosa wasn’t here right now. She ate another. They were just two pale souls in the dark of the world, quiet in their refuge. As if everything was well. As if the night held no terror. And the stars circled silent and icy all around them.
They always spoke English, except for little bursts of Spanish.
If you looked at Little Angel, you’d never know he was Mexican. Unless you looked really close. His sister-in-law Paz called him “Apache nose”—nariz de Apache—when she wasn’t hissing insults at him. She didn’t know the semi-handsome crook in that nose had come from one of Big Angel’s punches.
MaryLú watched him from the kitchenette. Little gringo. His mother was an American, after all. It made the others mad, Papá Antonio leaving them behind for a gringa. Big Angel called it “buying a Cadillac.” She smiled a little. Then she shook her head.
“Ay Dios,” she said, as had every generation of Mexican women back through time.
She and Little Angel were intimate strangers. They hadn’t even met until he was ten. Little freckle-nosed pudge.
“Y tú,” she’d asked, “cómo te llamas?”
“Angel.”
“How are you named Angel? Angel is standing right over there!” she cried, pointing at her big brother.
He’d shrugged. “Papá forgot he already used that name, I guess.”
This struck everybody as hilarious. It was so true. Even now it made her grin. Then her grin slid away and she ate more chocolate.
Frankly, Little Angel didn’t like the crunching. Having been raised in isolation, he didn’t enjoy the sound of others chewing. The rest of the clan seemed to take comfort in it.
“Baby Brother,” she said. “You know Angel can’t last much longer.”
“I know.”
“He wanted a birthday, pues. A last birthday.”
She hove to her feet—back hurting—and brought forth a plate of Mexican pan dulce. He couldn’t resist the pig-shaped gingerbread cookies. Marranitos. She liked the sticky rainbow-colored stuff with shaved coconut on it. She set a glass of milk on the coffee table for him. He sat up and reached for it.
“Everybody knows he won’t see another one, right?” he said.
“Most of them. Sure.” She shrugged, bit her pastry. “Some people aren’t so smart.”
“Leave it to Big Angel,” Little Angel said, “to attend his own funeral.”
He sipped his milk. He was thinking about Lalo telling him, “Talk’s all we got.” They watched Jimmy Fallon before going to bed, Little Angel thinking: Is that it? Life just ends? And we watch TV?
* * *
Little Angel lay on the pull-out couch, thinking. He was covered in those multicolored Tijuana blankets tourists liked to buy. I am a cliché, he thought. Where’s my sombrero?
His girlfriend in Seattle didn’t know about the name they knew him by—he wasn’t “Angel” to her. He used his middle name up north. Gabriel. It was so romantic.
Don Antonio, their Great Father, had been called Angel by his mother, the legendary Mamá Meche, grandmother to the tribe. He was her baby, what they called chiqueado. Spoiled, in the far weaker American term. A boy coddled and carried, whose mother’s spit healed his every scratch, who could do no wrong. It wasn’t lost on Big Angel and his sisters that this pitiless old lady was named Mercy.
The siblings thought of their father as First Angel—El Primer Angel. It was like some South American novel—every man in the family with the same name. At least they had been spared a sister named Angela, though one of the grandnieces was named Angelita.
It was a swirl. He caught small flashes of family history like shreds of colored paper spinning in the wind. Until massive assaults of revelations and confessions came out of nowhere and destroyed whatever drinking party they threw.
He put his hands behind his head.
Little Angel Gabriel was the Third Angel, after Big Angel and Don Antonio, El Primer Angel. He had hung like a moth in the spider web of his parents’ marriage. Don Antonio, strangely truculent and guarded in one corner of their apartment, fuming over racial slights at the hands of the gringos cabrones in his diminished immigrant life. He oozed cigarette smoke from his mouth and nostrils like a burning barn, his broken teeth like the shattered boards of the barn door. Teeth worn down to painful stubs from their nightly grinding. Nightmares of guilt and regret for his many sins made him embrace the endless pain in his mouth. Those without pain infuriated him. And those who feared pain, who did not suffer as bravely as his victims did, were to be reviled, not pitied.
Don Antonio had seen men beaten with bats who made less fuss than his boys did when they fell down and split their knees. To hurt his children was to prepare them for life. He stared at Little Angel with disdain and fear. He didn’t enjoy hurting him, but it was his duty. “I don’t know,” Don Antonio had confessed to Big Angel, “if he is a genius or a psychopath.”
“He’s American,” Big Angel said.
“Chingado.”
Don Antonio, full of rage over Little Angel’s mother—so American. Betty. He had looked for the ultimate Americana, and he’d found her. All Indiana milk and honey. Cornflower-blue eyes. Thought herself so superior. Turning his son into some American faggot. Buying him comic books and hippie records. Yet asking Antonio to wield the belt when the boy transgressed. There were better punishments than belts. Better ways to love him into manhood. He had smoked and glared and thought, Toug
h little bastard, though—Little Angel had stayed that way no matter what Don Antonio did.
Dad. Dead and more unreachable than ever. And now Big Angel was going to die.
His brother had always had a rich voice—not a basso voice, but a rich lower baritone. Strong. Perhaps the most shocking thing about his condition now was not his skeletal thinness or his diminished physical stature. But his voice. A weird, reedy alto. A voice that sounded like the big brother of the family had inhaled helium. Or had somehow reversed age as the body collapsed—he had his Baby Angel voice back. That six-year-old’s voice and six-year-old’s eyes. That ravaged face held two ardent coals—his black eyes shone with mad light, hunger for the world, amusement and excitement. They raged with delight in everything.
Little Angel had never seen his big brother look more excited. He seemed so keyed up with energy that if his legs could hold him, he would leap from his wheelchair and play hopscotch with his grandchildren. In spite of his obvious pain, he had a smile on his face at all times. One of his uncles had raised his eyebrows at Little Angel and spun his finger around beside his head, but Little Angel thought his brother was anything but crazy.
He had asked, in the sick bed as they shared his pillows, “What are you teaching, Carnal?”
“Reynolds Price.”
“Who is that?”
“Novelist, poet.”
“Tell me a line.”
“‘I am waiting for Jesus in a room made of salt.’”
Big Angel had thought about that. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s me.”
“He says if he cries, the room will dissolve.”
Big Angel rubbed his eyes. “Yes,” he said.
“He’s dead now,” Little Angel said.
“I know that from the poem.”
Big Angel’s thick, dark hair was now a white post-chemo flattop. Little moles visible on his scalp. But that too made him look alarmingly young. Don Antonio had kept his boys in crew cuts. Little Angel had been the first to grow freak hair and disgrace them all by having his ear pierced. It hadn’t taken long, though, for time to roll over them all until the nephews discovered Van Halen and grew mullets and got tattoos. Another generation ruined.