The House of Broken Angels

  Perla had only lived in the United States for forty-one years—she couldn’t be expected to learn English overnight.

  “Gracias, mija.”

  For example, when she tried to call her daughter “honey,” she still made it into Spanish. She called her “la honis.” In her mind, “honey” started with a Mexican j and ended in a long e. La jo-nees.

  Perla sent a slow sigh upward to Our Lady of Guadalupe. She knew that real prayers, women’s prayers, didn’t even need words. What mother didn’t understand her daughter’s sighs? Her prayer said: This party is too much pressure. The Virgin would just nod. She knew all about complicated males.

  Perla’s sisters were helping, of course. Lupita, Gloriosa. They were always with her and Big Angel. For holidays, funerals, weddings, births, baptisms, birthdays. For coffee. After divorces. Sitting in at supper or breakfast or cracking a fresh bottle or playing dominoes.

  She was watching the bustle, and she watched the little kids run around the yard with the Chiweenie mole rats. Lupita ran the kitchen. La Gloriosa was late—it was her task to lead the children in their mad dashes and to keep the flow moving. Gloriosa was the directora de eventos. It was all a dance. She was always late. La Gloriosa—when you were glorious, you did what you had to do. The world could wait.

  Perla lit a cigarette. She had been quitting smoking for fifty years. She shrugged. Even La Gloriosa still smoked sometimes.

  Perla squinted.

  Who were these little kids? Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren. Nieces. Grand-nieces. Neighbors. There was a tall black kid lounging in a corner.

  She called Lalo. “Mijo! Juan! No, Tonio! No! Digo, Tato. Cómo te llames, pues. Ven!” She couldn’t remember anybody’s name anymore, and she didn’t particularly care.

  Lalo was in his garage, watching Big Angel’s old VHS tapes. There was, like, a whole library in cardboard boxes. He was in the middle of the ’80s monster movie C.H.U.D. He paused it. Rolled out of his garage and ambled over. He had shed his suit and was in his Chargers jersey and giant gangsta shorts. Black Chuck Taylors, no socks. He told a little fat boy, “Yo, mijo, don’t be a chud!”

  He towered over Perla.

  “It’s Lalo, Ma. Not Tato. Whazzup?” He kissed her head.

  Minnie brought out the coffee, said, “Move, huevo head.”

  “I ain’t got no huevo head. Check yourself, puppet!”

  “It’s like a soft-boiled egg,” Minnie noted.

  “I’ma kick you.”

  In Spanish, Perla said, “Who is that negro?”

  Lalo said, “That’s your nephew, Ma.”

  “What’s he got on his head?”

  “Padres hat.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Rodney.”

  Minnie put the cup of coffee down before her. “Move, cue ball,” Minnie told Lalo and rubbed his shaved head.

  “Puppet,” he said, “be careful nobody don’t cut your strings.”

  “Shut up, boy. Damn.”

  “Life is wonderful, Minerva,” Perla told her. “Full of many wonders. I see ghosts.”

  “Cool, Ma.” La Minnie went back inside to slave in the kitchen. Slightly baffled, but that was what the old-timers did to you. Bad enough Daddy was talking crazy, but now Moms was doing it.

  “Don’t be no chudhole, Minnie!” Lalo called. He kept scratching at his POPS 4EVER tattoo.

  “Pobre Rodney,” Perla said. “Is he uncomfortable?”

  “’Bout what?” Lalo said. “He’s, like, freakin’ Rodney. He’s always been here, Ma.”

  “I was never white enough for your father’s family,” Perla told him. “I mean, she was never white, Mamá América. Brown, como café con leche. But she was whiter than me. O sí, mijito. I heard her calling me an India. I wasn’t deaf, you know!” She sipped her coffee. “Too hot,” she noted. “Who made this? Anyway. Your grandmother never approved of me. She thought I was low class. She called me a prostitute.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. “Dang,” he said, then went back to his movie in the garage.

  He was trying to just shut it all out. His son had called him an hour before. They knew who did it.

  “Did what?” Lalo had asked.

  “Offed Tío Braulio.”

  “No shit?”

  “Word, Pops,” his son said. “So whatchu gon’ do about it?”

  And Lalo said, “Me?”

  * * *

  5:00 p.m.

  Little Angel parked down the block. The neighborhood was damp in the gutters but habitually sun flogged and dusty looking. The grass was yellow, and the walls looked faded. He had grown up on the white side of town. The kids in school had thought his family was French.

  But his house could have been here: 1,200-square-foot box. Bougainvillea. Big Wheels and scooters abandoned in driveways. Basketball hoops over the garage doors. Similar class stratum, the professor inside him lectured. Music was different, though.

  He walked up the street. Felt like a camera was watching him. Like eyes were at all the windows. Locals peeping the Crown Vic, thinking: Pigs! He hung his head and slumped his shoulders, as if he could become shorter and somehow invisible.

  Who’s that gabacho?

  Oh, it’s the gringo-Mex.

  Dude looks like a narc.

  He always felt self-conscious just walking in the front door of Big Angel and Perla’s house like everybody else. As if he hadn’t earned a membership yet to their club. But whenever he knocked or rang the bell, they all scolded him. What kind of brother knocks? So he manned up and opened the heavy steel-mesh security grate and stepped inside. People lounged around the big table set up in the living room. Baseball caps with straight bills. Cigarettes.

  La Gloriosa had just gotten there and stood in the bright dining alcove, backlit, hands on hips. Her Spanx were killing her. Her skirt was golden and flared off her brown legs. He saw the shadows of those legs through the fabric. Her hair, piling on her shoulders, was electric with highlights, like glitters on a sea of ink.

  She eyed him. He grinned. She was as magnificent as a velvet painting of an Aztec goddess in a taco shop. She had muscles.

  “Mi amor,” he said.

  “Ay, tú.” La Gloriosa had no time for foolishness. She tipped her head back, dismissing him with her chin. Ringlets flew: a rebuke.

  He answered with a quick bounce of his eyebrows.

  Her head tipped down, ringlets cascading over her shoulders: a possible reconciliation. She looked up under her brows like a she-wolf. He flushed, made his eyes dewy.

  Her left eyebrow rose slowly and lodged. He looked at her collarbone. Down, but not indecently. Eyes rose slowly to meet hers. He smiled with one side of his mouth.

  “Don’t be naughty,” she said.

  Perla came in from the backyard, looking for more coffee. “Es mi baby!” she cried, staggering over to Little Angel and petting his face. She looked back and forth between them. “Not this again,” she said.

  La Gloriosa made a moochy-lip mouth gesture at him that crinkled her nose, then she vanished behind the pantry to rattle things in the sink. In mock irritation. If he had been born with a crest, his feathers would have risen and he would have flown out to find her a pretty twig.

  “Tu hermano está en su cama,” Perla said, gesturing to the back room where Big Angel rested. “Always in bed.”

  Little Angel said, “He must be exhausted.”

  “Siempre. Pobre Flaco.”

  She was looking around, her empty coffee cup hanging off her finger. He took it from her and led her to the little aluminum table and sat her down. “I’ll get it,” he said.

  “Tenk yous,” she said. “Leche, please. Y azúcar.”

  “Sí.”

  “Sugar—lots of sugar.”

  La Gloriosa’s back was to him as she scrubbed last night’s pots. He stepped up to her and caught a sweet sniff as he leaned around her to get to the coffee pot on the counter. She felt him leaning in, and she got a blue bolt of e
lectricity right up her neck, but she showed nothing.

  “Excuse me,” he said, putting a hand on her back.

  She jumped. “I am sixty years old,” she whispered.

  “Sixty’s the new forty,” he said. “And I’m almost fifty. So you’re younger than I am.”

  She had to think about that one.

  The coffeepot said, Gloop.

  She squinted at him. “Don’t play with me,” she said.

  He stood there, coffee steaming. She was close enough that he could feel her body heat. She smelled like almonds and vanilla.

  He could tell she did not remember that once, when they were both many years younger, she had drunk too much Thunderbird at a rare gathering at his parents’ house. She had been showing his mother Latin dance moves. La cumbia. Rumba. Cha-cha. She was hilariously pickled by the end of the night, and she had found him in the hall outside the bedroom used for coats and had leaned on him and said, “Kiss me good night, you bad boy.”

  He gave her a teenage peck.

  “That is not how you kiss a woman,” she said. And kissed him on the mouth. “That’s how you kiss a woman.” And grabbed her coat and was gone like some apparition from beyond.

  “I am not playing,” he said now.

  “You think it’s so easy!”

  “It is easy.”

  “O sí, cabrón? And what do you want from me?” She blew hair out of her face. What a pendejo!

  “Do you want me to stop?” he said.

  She banged a pot in the sink. Stared out the kitchen window at the vatos standing around in the driveway. She shook out her curls. Sighed. “No,” she said.

  He took the coffee and the Carnation milk can and the sugar to Perla.

  “Instant?” she said.

  “No. Coffeepot.”

  She made a face. These old-timers, they lived for instant coffee.

  Perla didn’t even look at him. Simply gestured at Gloriosa with her eyebrows. “Picaflor,” she said.

  “Me?”

  She blew on her coffee.

  He thought about how he’d explain that to his students. One of those Mexican phrases. Honeybee? No. Bumblebee? Nope. Hummingbird? A creature who goes from flower to flower, sampling the nectar.

  He cleared his throat. “I—”

  “Go talk to your brother,” Perla said.

  * * *

  First, he stopped in the living room and inspected Big Angel’s citizenship papers. Big Angel kept them in a little frame on the wall for everyone to admire. Miniature American flags tucked in the corners. A faded picture of the kids—Yndio and Braulio. Little Angel squinted; he had been beautiful, that Braulio. Cherubic. And little Lalo all cheeky and curly. Minnie, apparently, hadn’t been born yet.

  The family portrait hung beside that. It was in a huge white frame with gold filigree vines carved into the wood. A color photo from Sears. Mamá América holding a photograph of Dad. And Big Angel, MaryLú, and César gathered around her. There it was. They hadn’t thought to invite him. There was no slight intended. Which made it feel worse somehow.

  Minnie came up beside him and looked at it.

  “The whole family, Tío,” she said.

  “Most of it.”

  She looked at him, back at the picture, at him, at the picture. “Oh,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oops,” she said.

  “A minor oversight,” he said with chipper self-pity.

  “You got an identity crisis, huh?”

  “Secret’s out.”

  “You ain’t alone, feeling alone like that. Some of us know what that feels like.” She went out the front door and wandered down the street.

  He walked the fourteen steps back to the bedroom door.

  * * *

  It terrified him.

  Little Angel was certain his brother would be dead. Or he would be in some gruesome medical crisis. Or would smell somehow, some embarrassing stink that would upset them both.

  But none of these things were true. Big Angel was sitting up, with his back against a pile of pillows. He wore a bright white undershirt and comfy pajama pants. Thick white gym socks on his feet. He smelled like baby powder and a little sweat.

  Big Angel was addressing a small clutch of ninth graders, who stood at the foot of his bed, looking awkward. Each of the girls had one arm folded across her belly and clamped to her ribs with the other arm dangling as if lifeless. The boys had the ends of their fingers stuffed into their pants pockets.

  Big Angel was saying: “A panda bear walked into a restaurant.”

  “Yeah, Pops?”

  “Sí. And he sat at the counter and asked for food and a Pepsi.”

  “So what happened, Pops?”

  “He ate, drank, pulled out a pistol, and shot the cook.”

  “What!”

  “As he left, he shouted, ‘Look it up on Google!’” Big Angel was grinning like a mad street person, eyes glittering and feral.

  The kids looked at one another.

  “Did they look it up, Pops?”

  “Of course. Do you know what it said?”

  They shook their heads.

  “It said, ‘Panda bear. A vegetarian mammal that eats shoots and leaves.’” He laughed.

  They looked at one another again.

  “I get it,” said one fat boy.

  “Out, mocosos,” Little Angel said.

  They shuffled out.

  “I ain’t got boogers, Tío,” the fat boy protested.

  Newspapers were scattered all over the bed. Big Angel had circled an infamous picture about a hundred times. A dead toddler facedown in European surf. Drowned and cast off like a little bag of unwanted clothes. Big Angel saw Little Angel looking at it. He picked up the paper, folded it carefully, and set it on his bedside table.

  “Nobody wants the immigrant,” Big Angel said. “He drowned, that boy.”

  “I know.”

  “Trying to get a new life.”

  “I know.”

  “Our people look like that,” Big Angel said. “In the desert.”

  Our people. “I’ll have to think about that one,” Little Angel said. It occurred to him that maybe Big Angel wasn’t a Republican after all. He realized he knew very little about his big brother. “Seems like we’ve been here a really long time,” he said. “Seems there are very few de La Cruz bodies in the desert.” He couldn’t stop himself, though his brother’s face darkened. “We’re pretty much Americans now, right? I mean, this is a post-immigration family. By what, almost fifty years?”

  “Yeesus.”

  “I’m still Mexican,” Little Angel said. “Mexican-American? But let’s face it, I don’t live in, what, Sinaloa.”

  Big Angel wiped his lips. He had thought they were wet, but they were chapped. “Must be nice, Carnal,” he said. “To choose who you are.”

  Little Angel looked off into a fascinating corner of the room. “Let’s not get into this today.”

  “What?”

  “Your ‘I’m more Mexican than you are’ games.”

  “I thought you just said you were a gringo.”

  “Eat me,” Little Angel muttered.

  “Culero.”

  They were suddenly eleven.

  “Okay.” Big Angel shrugged one shoulder. “I’ll be dead tomorrow, so no problem.”

  Jeezuz Jiminy Jumpin’ Christ. Little Angel smiled warmly.

  Big Angel patted the bed. “Sit.”

  Apparently the ethnic civil war had passed like one of the tardy little rain clouds speeding east to collapse against the Cuyamaca Mountains.

  “Carnal!” Big Angel said, eyes suddenly as bright as little black campfires. “Remember how my father peeled oranges?”

  Little Angel nodded. “I remember our father, yeah.”

  Big Angel took the hint. “Our father. Put chile powder on oranges.”

  “And salt.”

  “Tajín!”

  They found this funny for some reason.

  “He p
eeled oranges in one long strip,” Big Angel shouted. “He made snakes out of the peel. Every time.”

  They laughed some more. It felt good to laugh. Mindless. Safe.

  “He told me they were tapeworms,” Little Angel said.

  “Did I ever tell you about—” Big Angel blurted, and he was off on a binge of storytelling. Jokes and sorrows. Strange tales of their ancestors. Questions about Seattle. When he began a detailed tour of the many medicine bottles on his table, and doses and times of administering them, Little Angel gave up standing there awkwardly and climbed into bed beside his brother.

  silence

  good talk

  oysters

  a day without pain

  The Night Before the Party

  10:00 p.m.

  Big Angel was asleep when Perla finally came into the room. Her days seemed endless. So much work to do, so much organizing, so much praying. She felt like she was carrying the tumors sometimes. But she dared not acknowledge that terrible thought. She did not deserve self-pity, she told herself. There would be time for that soon enough.

  Most everybody had gone home. La Gloriosa had ushered Little Angel out as if he were a stray cat. It was a wonder she hadn’t hit him with a broom. Now she could finally leave. She put on her coat and hurried to her car with her keys in her fist, sticking out between her clenched fingers, in case any pendejo stepped up. She had Mace in her purse. And a Taser she’d bought in Tijuana. She was in no mood.

  La Minnie went to Dunkin’ Donuts and bought a box of donuts for her men. El Tigre. He could get behind some donut action for sure. She couldn’t figure out how he kept his six-pack eating all the bad crap he ate. It cost her a fortune to do hot wraps to try to sweat it off.

  Minnie’s oldest son was a sailor and told her that in Portland there was some kind of voodoo donut shop. Like, you could buy a coffin full of donuts. Crazy hippies. The boys on his ship were all tweaked about bacon-wrapped maple bars. She wished she could get some of those. Her man would love them.

  Back at the house, diehards muttered in the living room. Video games bleeped and yowled behind the locked garage door. A pile of peewees snored and snuffled in the back room, layered with dogs.

  Perla went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and undressed in the dark. She didn’t like to look at herself in the mirror. Now she wore big white grandmother underpants. And her bra held back a flood of flesh. Well, the hills are old, but they still have flowers on them. Seventy was difficult for a woman who imagined herself as a thirty-five-year-old with a slightly bad hip but otherwise in good shape.