Carry Me Like Water

  Jake nodded, took a puff from his cigarette, and blew out the smoke through his nose.

  Eddie watched him. “You should have been a movie star, you know that?”

  Jake laughed. “Yeah, just like Rock Hudson.” He sneered and took another puff from his cigarette. “You were one sad kid, Eddie. I always wanted to make you happy. You’re not like that anymore.”

  Eddie put out his cigarette in the ashtray. “I got tired of being atone. I got tired of pushing people away. And one day, I saw this woman. She was sitting on a bench at UCLA and she was reading a book and laughing. There was something about her. She looked as if she didn’t need anybody—I liked that. I went home and cried, just cried like some kid in junior high school. There was nothing in me but want and more want. I wasn’t angry like you—just, well, just sad and pathetic. The next semester, I saw that woman again. She was in an English class, and a part of me knew her instantly—because she was as sad I was. When she wasn’t laughing she looked lost. And somehow I just knew. And I married her.” He laughed. “And damnit, that woman saved my ass.” Eddie laughed, “Strange that we both wound up with Latino lovers from the other side of the tracks.”

  “Just a coincidence,” Jake said as he lit another cigarette.

  “Yeah,” Eddie said, “just a coincidence.” But Mom would have hated it.

  “Of course, our side of the tracks was just grand, huh?”

  “We didn’t starve, Jake.”

  “We had fucked-up parents, Eddie.”

  “And now we have their money, Jake. A lot of people get to be poor and have fucked-up parents. A lot of people never have shit. Esperanza—she never had anything till Mom and Dad died.”

  “You’re raising your voice, Eddie.”

  “Sony. It’s just that a lot of people never got the chances we got.” Eddie stopped, “It’s just that—hell—did either of us have to work as hard as Joaquin?”

  Jake nodded, but he immediately decided to change the course of the conversation. He didn’t want to fight with his younger brother. It wasn’t worth it, “She was a nice lady, Esperanza was. Did she like us or did she feel sorry for us?”

  “Both maybe.”

  “Did I ever tell you that I visited her after I got out of jail?”

  “No. How come she didn’t tell me?”

  “I made her promise not to say anything to you. It would only make you sad. I wanted you to forget about me. They were never going to let me take you with me. Anyway, I just wanted to see her. When I was growing up, she used to make me smile. She was the only person in that household that knew anything about touching. She was the only person I knew who ever said ‘thank you’ and meant it. Everyone else said it because they were trained to say it. When she thanked you for something, she looked right at you. Sometimes I felt as if her sense of gratitude might break something inside me. Not like Mom and Dad—they weren’t touchers. I’m still amazed Mom and Dad had children. Amazing, They hated each other, you know?”

  “But they understood each other.”

  Jake nodded.

  “Were you surprised when Mom shot him, then pointed the gun at herself?”

  “I don’t know, Eddie. I remember sitting in a coffee shop staring at this guy. I tried to pretend I was reading the newspaper—and then I saw the headlines. I just ran out of that place as fast as I could. I tore up the newspaper—I remember doing that—and I remember crying. I didn’t know why I was crying at the time, but I know now: I cried because I wasn’t sad. My parents killed each other and I wasn’t sad. And then I just got drunk. You know, I should be dead. After the way I’ve lived, I should have died a long time ago. How come you’re so sober?”

  Eddie shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows?”

  “Maybe sad was your addiction.”

  “Not anymore, Jake.” He rolled down his window and stuck his head out. He laughed. “I think I’ll get a dog.” He laughed again. “Did you know, Jake, that the only reason I survived our parents was because I carried the memory of your face in my body? Did you know that? Your memory, it was everything.”

  “I kept your picture,” Jake said. “I had to look at you every day. St. Jonathan, that’s what Joaquin used to call you. ‘I have my santos,’ he told me once, ‘and you have St. Jonathan’s picture.’ On holy days, Joaquin used to light a candle in front of your picture, and he’d place a glass of wine next to the candle in case you decided to walk in the door.” He smiled. “Joaquin was a funny guy. I guess I couldn’t have you both—both is too much to ask.” He took his eyes off the road for a moment, and looked at his younger brother.

  “What would you do if you lost her?”

  “I would curse God and die.”

  “No you wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “You have a son.”

  Eddie nodded. “I would mourn forever, and my son would have to heal me.”

  “That’s a big job for a little kid.”

  “He’d have to be strong because I couldn’t be.”

  “You could be strong. Trust me.”

  They both seemed to drift into their own worlds where they could not follow each other, worlds where they needed to go alone. The silence between them was neither dark nor cold nor harsh, but soft as one of Maria Elena’s candles burning through the night. Eddie remembered the earliest memory he had of his brother. It was his fourth birthday. He remembered a birthday cake and Esperanza and his brother and his parents singing. He remembered tearing open presents. He didn’t remember very much else. Something must have happened because he remembered his brother picking him up and telling him everything would be OK. He remembered Jake helping him change into his pajamas, reading him a story, and kissing him good night. That was his first memory of anything. “You carried me,” he whispered.

  “Huh?”

  “On my fourth birthday, you carried me to bed.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said, “what in the hell made you remember that?”

  “What happened?”

  “Mom and Dad had had too much to drink. They started going at each other. I didn’t want you to see it—so I carried you upstairs.”

  “And you read me a story.”

  “I always read you stories.”

  “I never thanked you.”

  “I never needed to be thanked.” Jake lit another cigarette. He blew the smoke out through his nose, and watched his brother through his right eye. “When I die—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that, Jake.”

  “Eddie? Eddie, when I die, will you write something in your journal about me?”

  Eddie stared straight at the road, and did not look at his brother.

  “And will you show what you write to your son? Will you do that?”

  Eddie nodded slowly, but did not speak.

  “And will you tell him that I loved him, and that he gave me hope?”

  “Yes,” Eddie said, “I’ll tell him.”

  Jake finished his cigarette without saying another word. Again they both settled into a familiar quiet, a quiet that was part of the way they spoke to each other. They had learned quickly that silence was their ally. Words, with them, had their limits. Limits they respected. They said little else until they arrived at the ruins of Casas Grandes.

  Jake carried Joaquin’s ashes in a small clay vase as he toured the ruins of Casas Grandes. He had never seen or been near anything like this, though Joaquin had tried to describe this place to him many times. “What happened to the people?” Jake had asked him. “No one knows,” Joaquin had answered, “maybe a long drought, maybe a war, maybe a plague.”

  “There’s no water here,” he said, looking at Eddie.

  “Once there was,” Eddie answered.

  The crumbling adobe was dry as Joaquin’s ashes, and as Jake touched one of the walls, warm in the noonday sun, he felt as if the wall might swallow him. There was earth on his palm as he pulled his hand away. Somehow he understood perfectly why Joaquin loved this place. His skin had be
en almost the same color as the adobe walls of this ruined city. He looked at his palm and felt he was looking at Joaquin, Joaquin who had been so like this place: peaceful and dramatic and full of the past—and empty of it. He wondered what kind of civilization it had been—barbarous or just? Not that it mattered—they had not been spared. He thought of San Francisco, he thought of El Paso and he wondered if those cities, too, would one day become like this place, unpeopled and desolate and peaceful at last in their deadness. He laughed out loud remembering how Joaquin told him that the only radically democratic institution on earth was death. He thought of the first time he’d seen him. He had fought Joaquin’s memory since his death. It was easier to forget, less painful. But today he wanted to grieve, and to pay his grief all the respect it was due. He wanted to kneel on the ground, but felt stupid since that kind of homage was not natural to him. Joaquin would’ve knelt. Jake could not. He could only think of doing it. Joaquin had been a man who understood the necessity of humility. Jacob had not been raised in an environment that understood the concept. He found himself howling to a sky that had never known how to listen. He felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder. He knew Eddie’s hand kept him from falling off the edge of the world. He knew, too, that his howls were not only for Joaquin, but for his life—for everything that had gone bad in it, for everything and everyone who had hurt him and left him with indelible marks so like these ruins he was standing on. He saw his father on top of him cutting him like a knife; he saw himself staring up at his brother’s room the night his parents made him leave; he saw the jail where he’d lived for almost a year; he saw Joaquin dying in his arms. He saw himself yelling at a heron, “Fly! Fly!” He tossed Joaquin’s ashes into the air, and saw the wind scatter them among the grains of sand. “Fly. Fly.” His voice was cracked and tired. He wanted to be the dead heron. He wanted to be Joaquin’s ashes. He wanted to be the ruins of Casas Grandes. He wanted to be anything but Jake, Jake who was over forty and was lost in the desert that was his life. “I want to die,” he yelled, “I want, I want to—”

  Eddie grabbed him and placed his hand over his mouth. “Never say that,” Eddie whispered, “say only that you want to live.” He let his brother cry for a long time. “Say it, Jake,” he said, “say I want to live.”

  “I want to live,” Jake said. He said it for his brother, his brother who had become his scarred and stubborn heart.

  7

  LUZ FOUND a small, perfect house on Prospect Street in Sunset Heights. The place was old and in need of paint, but the walls were strong, and it was a real house with a porch and a backyard where Mexican primroses grew wild. “It has lots of windows,” Luz told Diego, “and we’ll always have plenty of sun. No dark houses.”

  Diego inspected the house for the tenth time that day. “I like it,” he wrote, “it feels right. Everything is just right,” He sat on an old couch in the living room and watched the light coming through the curtainless windows. He stared at the worn wooden floors and thought of his mother. He thought she would have liked this house. He lit a cigarette. Luz walked into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee and sat across from Diego in an old chair.

  “It’s just perfect,” Diego wrote.

  “Not perfect, Dieguito.”

  “You don’t like the house?”

  “I’m not talking about the damned house, mi amor. The house is the best—the very best. The house just needs a few plants—I’m good with plants, I can make a dead plant come to life, Diego, but it’s not the house I’m talking about. I’m talking about something else.”

  Diego looked at her, shrugged his shoulders and stuck his hands out.

  “You really want to know?”

  “You’re going to tell me anyway.” He showed her the note and laughed.

  “We’ve been living together for two weeks and already you’re accusing me of talking too much. I don’t talk too much—well, only compared to you—I just like to communicate.”

  “I’m not accusing you. I was just playing—just a joke. Can’t we joke? Tell me, what’s not perfect? Tell me, I want to know.”

  She looked at him. “Do you believe in dreams?”

  “I already told you, Luz. Didn’t I tell you about my dreams and Mary and about my dreams with my mother in them, and how I remembered how my mother was killed in that car accident?”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, “you told me. Poor Mary. I know I never liked her, but I never wanted that to happen to her. Pendeja that she was, she couldn’t help it. God forgive her for claiming she was the Virgin, but she didn’t deserve to die like that. Do you think the pinche migra had something to do with her murder?”

  Diego looked at her and shook his head. “No. And I don’t think you think so either. The migra isn’t responsible for everything, They’re not criminals.”

  “Pendejo,” she said, “of course they’re criminals. You think because they wear a uniform they’re not criminals?”

  “OK,” he wrote, “they’re criminals.”

  “You think I’m a pendeja, Dieguito? You’re agreeing with me just so I’ll shut up. Don’t start acting like a man just because we’re living together.”

  “I AM A MAN,” he wrote. He held up the note like a banner.

  “You know what I mean, Diego. Don’t start acting like Mundo. There’s enough of those already. God knows they’ve burned half the women in this damned city with their smoldering eyes and their pinche attitudes. You don’t need to start acting like that, Dieguito.”

  “What does Mundo have to do with dreams? Mundo doesn’t believe in dreams.”

  “I knew it,” she said. She clapped her hands with satisfaction. “Men like that don’t believe in anything but a woman’s body.” She looked at him carefully. “Do you really believe in dreams? Because if you don’t, I’m not going to tell you about the ones I’ve been having. If you laugh at me, Dieguito, I’ll send you back to work at Vicky’s.”

  “I won’t laugh,” Diego wrote. “You should know better than that. Don’t insult me.”

  She nodded. “God is punishing me, my Diego. Ever since I’ve come back from Chicago, I’ve been having dreams. There’s a man who comes to me. I’m always sitting at the bridge in my dream, and I’m watching the people just like we used to do on Saturdays. And the man comes up to me. I feel like I know him, and he just looks at me. His eyes are even softer than yours, Dieguito. He sticks out his hand like a beggar. I try to hand him money, and he won’t take it. He throws the money into the river and then I feel like a whore. I wake up feeling bad, Diego, And all day, I think about it. Even this week, since going back to work, I think about it all the time. And I’ve finally figured it out. All of a sudden, I remembered something I’d forgotten. I’m such a pendeja, sometimes. The man who keeps coming to me will keep coming until I give him what he wants. He’s not like most men—he’s not looking for sex, and he’s not looking for a meal either, and he’s not looking for a job or for money. He doesn’t have that look like that at all. His hunger is for something else. In the last dream something different happened. He turned the brown river to pure blue. It looked like the sky, my Diego, just like the morning sky. I swear it, it looked so real. And his open palm was right in front of me. And this morning it came to me—I remembered—just like you remembered about your mother. Dreams do that, Diego.” She paused and drank from her cup of coffee. “It’s good coffee,” she said.

  “Remembered what?” Diego wrote.

  “I remembered about the time my first son was sick, I don’t remember very much, only that he was just a baby and he had a fever and was very sick. He was burning up, so hot, Dieguito. I went to church and I told God that if he let my son live I would go on a pilgrimage to Cristo Rey. Well, Dieguito, pendeja that I am I forgot about my promise. My son got well, and I never paid God what I owed him. And now He wants me to pay up. I have to pay back what I owe.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to climb the mountain.”

&nbsp
; “Which mountain?”

  “Pendejo! Which mountain do you think? Cristo Rey.”

  “If you wait until October, you can go on the annual pilgrimage. They go every year. The bishop goes, too. Sometimes even more than one bishop is there—I’ve never been, but I’ve read about it in the paper. Hundreds of people go, hundreds of pilgrims, and they have a Mass at the foot of the statue. We can go in October, Luz, and I’ll go with you.”

  Luz read Diego’s note and shook her head. “No, my Diego, God won’t wait. He’s waited long enough. Dreams have their way, and I can’t wait that long. I have to go now—as soon as possible.”

  “But they say it’s dangerous. It’s much better to go with a lot of people. What if something happens to us?”

  “You think God is going to let something happen to us if we’re climbing his mountain to pray?”

  “I don’t think the robbers are going to ask God why we’re there. I don’t think they’re going to ask us either.”

  “Look, Diego, what are you talking about? The robbers? What kind of books have you been reading? We don’t have anything worth stealing, anyway. Don’t be a pendejo.”

  “What if they kill us?”

  Luz shook her head and laughed. “We’ll take Mundo with us if that will make you feel better. It will be good for that guy to go on a pilgrimage. Maybe God will cure him.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything, Dieguito. You told me yourself that you found him in a garbage can. You think he couldn’t use some changes in his life? He can’t live like that forever, mi amor: You want him to live like he does for the rest of his life?”

  “If he wants to, why not? It’s his life, Luz.”

  She shook her head in disgust at Diego’s cleanly written words. “Why not? Diego, his life isn’t as simple as it seems. My first husband lived exactly like Mundo—and he was found dead on the streets of Juárez—drunk and dead. You want that for Mundo?” She lit a cigarette. “Yes, I think Mundo should go with us.”

  “Can he bring his friends?”