“You know very well what I’m talking about. I could have been your son, Aunt Amy. It was an accident that instead I ended up being your nephew.”
“You have no right to say such things, Archibald.” Miss Amy’s voice was muffled, as if she were speaking through a handkerchief. “Don’t say that ever again, or I won’t allow you back in my house.”
“Josefina has her sorrows too. That’s why she stroked you yesterday morning.”
Did Archibald achieve his goal? Miss Amy divined her nephew’s Machiavellian plot, and she knew that Niccolò Machiavelli was the Devil himself. Wasn’t the Devil called Old Nick in English legend? This Miss Amy knew because as a teenager she’d had a part in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, and the first person who speaks is Machiavelli, transformed into the Devil, Old Nick.
She sat with the window open to the park. Josefina came in with her tea, but Miss Amy didn’t turn to look at her. It was almost autumn, the most beautiful season on that lake, with its prolonged winters, daggerlike winds, brief spring-times, insolently coquettish, and summers when not a leaf stirred and the humidity hovered as high as the fiery red in the thermometers.
Miss Amy thought that her garden, however familiar to her, was a forgotten garden. An avenue of cedars led to its entrance and to the view of the lake, which was beginning to turn rough. This was the beauty of autumn, always nostalgically mixed, in Miss Dunbar’s eyes, with the punctual appearance of the maple buds in spring. Nevertheless, her garden was now a lost garden, and this afternoon—without consciously planning to, almost without realizing what she was saying, convinced she always talked that way to herself but enunciating the words clearly, not for her maid, who just happened to be standing behind her holding a tea tray, but as if she were saying something she had said before or would have said in any case—she remarked that in New Orleans her mother would appear on the balcony on special occasions wearing all her jewels so everyone could admire her as they walked by.
“It’s the same in Juchitán.”
“Hoochy what?”
“Juchitán is the name of our village, in Tehuantepec. My mother would go out to show off her jewelry on feast days.”
“Jewelry? Your mother?” said Miss Amy, more and more confused. What was this maid talking about? Who did she think she was? Did she have delusions of grandeur?
“That’s right. It goes from mother to daughter, ma’am, and no one dares sell them. The stones come from far away. They’re sacred.”
“Are you telling me that you could live like a grand lady in your hoochy town and instead you’re here cleaning my bathrooms?” said Miss Amy with renewed ferocity.
“No, I would use them to pay lawyers. But as I was saying, in Juchitec families jewels are sacred, for fiesta days, and pass from mother to daughter. It’s very beautiful.”
“So they must wear them all the time, because by all accounts it’s a perpetual feast day all year round—this saint, that martyr … Why are there so many saints in Mexico?”
“Why are there so many millionaires in the United States? God has his own plan for distributing things, ma’am.”
“Did you say you have to pay lawyers? Don’t tell me my idiot nephew is helping you!”
“Mr. Archibaldo is very generous.”
“Generous? With my money? He’s got nothing beyond what he’ll inherit from me. Charity may begin at home, but his home isn’t mine.”
“No, he doesn’t give us money, ma’am. Not at all. He’s teaching my husband law so he can become a lawyer and defend himself and his friends.”
“Where is your husband? What does he have to defend himself against?”
“He’s in jail, ma’am. He was unjustly accused—”
“That’s what they all say,” said Miss Amy, grimacing sarcastically.
“No, it’s true. In jail, the prisoners can learn things. My husband decided to study law to defend himself and his friends. He doesn’t want Don Archibaldo to defend him. He wants to defend himself. That’s his pride, ma’am. All Don Archibaldo does is give him classes.”
“Free?” The old woman made a fierce, unconscious grimace.
“No. That’s why I’m working here. I pay with my salary.”
“Which is to say, I pay. That’s a good one.”
“Don’t get mad, ma’am, please. Don’t get upset. I’m not very clever, I don’t know how to conceal things. I’m not lying to you. Excuse me.”
She walked away, and Miss Amy sat there wondering how her maid Josefina’s sorrow could in any way resemble her own—evoked with such lack of delicacy by her nephew a few days before. What did a criminal case involving Mexican immigrants have to do with a case of lost love, a missed opportunity?
“How is Josefina working out?” Archibald asked the next time they saw each other.
“At least she’s punctual.”
“See? Not all stereotypes are accurate.”
“Is her room a mess with all those idols and saints?”
“No, it’s neat as a pin.”
When Josefina served tea that afternoon, Miss Amy smiled at her and said that soon autumn would really begin and then the cold. Didn’t Josefina want to take advantage of the last days of summer to give a party?
“Just to show you my heart’s in the right place, Josefina. You told me a few days ago that there are lots of parties—fiestas—in your country. Isn’t there something coming up you’d like to celebrate?”
“The only thing I want to celebrate is my husband’s being declared innocent.”
“But that might take a while. No, I’m offering you a chance to throw a party for your friends in the back part of the garden, by the grape arbor.”
“If you think it’s a good idea…”
“Yes, Josefina, I’ve already said this house smells shut-up. I know you all are very spirited people. Invite a small group. I’ll come out to say hello, of course.”
On the day of the party, Miss Amy first spied from the dressing room on the second floor. Josefina, with her mistress’s permission, had set up a long table under the arbor. The house filled with unusual smells, and now Miss Amy watched a parade of clay platters piled with mysterious foods all mixed together and drowned in thick sauces, little baskets of tortillas, pitchers holding magenta- and amber-colored liquids.
As the guests began to arrive, she watched them closely from her hiding place. Some were dressed in everyday clothes—that was clear—but others, especially the women, had put on their best outfits for this special occasion. There were short jackets and T-shirts, but coats and ties as well. Some women wore pants while others wore satin dresses. There were children. Lots of people.
Other people. Miss Amy tried to use her intelligence to penetrate those black eyes, the dark complexions and wide smiles of her maid’s friends, the Mexicans. They were impenetrable. She felt she was staring at a wall of cactus, prickly, as if each one of those beings were really a porcupine. They wounded Miss Amy’s gaze just as they would have wounded her hands if she’d touched them. They were people who cut her flesh, like a sphere one could imagine made of razor blades. There was no way to take hold of them. They were other, alien; they confirmed the old lady’s revulsion, her prejudice.
Now what were they doing? Were they hanging a pot from the arbor, then giving a child a stick, blindfolding him, and watching while he swung blindly until he hit the pot and it fell in pieces and the other children rushed to pick up candies and peanuts? What? Had someone dared to bring a portable phonograph to play raucous music, guitars and trumpets, wolf howls? Were they going to dance in her garden, hug each other in that filthy way; were they going to touch, laughing uproariously, arms around one another’s waists, caressing one another’s backs, about to laugh, cry, or something worse?
As she had promised, she appeared in the garden. She had her cane in her hand. She went straight to the second piñata and smashed it. Next, she struck the record player. To all, she shouted, Out of my house. What do you think this is? This isn’t a cheap bar
, this is no bordello. Get out of here and take your blaring music and your indigestible food somewhere else. Don’t abuse my hospitality, this is my house, here we do things differently, we don’t keep hogs in the kitchen around here.
The guests all looked at Josefina. First she trembled, then she became calm, almost rigid.
“The mistress is right. This is her house. Thank you for coming. Thank you for wishing my husband good luck.”
They all left, some staring at Miss Amy angrily, others disdainfully, still others fearfully—but all with the feeling we call shame for others.
Only Josefina remained, standing tall, unchanged.
“Thank you for lending us your garden, ma’am. The party was very nice.”
“It was an abuse,” Miss Amy said through clenched teeth, disconcerted. “Too many people, too much noise, too much of everything.”
With a swing of her cane, she swept the platters from the table. The unaccustomed effort overwhelmed her. She lost her breath.
“You’re right, ma’am. Summer is coming to an end. Don’t get a chill now. Come back to the house and let me make you your afternoon tea.”
“You did it on purpose,” said a visibly annoyed Archibald as he nervously fingered the knot of his Brooks Brothers tie. “You suggested she give the party only to humiliate her in front of her friends.”
“It was an abuse. She went too far.”
“What do you want, for her to leave you like all the others? Do you want me to have you put away in an asylum?”
“You’d lose your inheritance.”
“But not my mind. You could drive anyone insane, Aunt Amy. How smart my father was not to marry you.”
“What are you saying, you ingrate?”
“I’m saying that you did this to humiliate Josefina and make her leave.”
“No, you said something else. But Josefina won’t leave. She needs the money to get her husband out of jail.”
“Not anymore. The court turned down the appeal. Josefina’s husband will stay in jail.”
“What will she do?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to talk to you either. You come to my house to insult me, to remind me of things I want to forget. You’re risking your inheritance.”
“Listen to me now, Aunt Amy. I renounce my inheritance.”
“You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. Don’t be a fool, Archibald.”
“No, really. I’ll renounce it unless you listen to me and hear the truth.”
“Your father was a coward. He wouldn’t take the final step. He didn’t ask me at the right moment. He humiliated me. He made me wait too long. I had no choice but to marry your uncle.”
“It’s that you never showed my father affection.”
“And he expected it?”
“Yes. He told me so, several times. If Amy had showed she loved me, I’d have taken the final step.”
“Why? Why didn’t he do it?” The voice and spirit of the old lady broke. “Why didn’t he show he loved me?”
“Because he was convinced you never loved anyone. He needed you to give him proof of your affection.”
“Are you telling me my life has been nothing but a huge misunderstanding?”
“No. There was no misunderstanding. My father convinced himself he’d done the right thing not asking you to marry him, Aunt Amelia. He told me that time had borne him out. You’ve never loved anyone.”
That afternoon when Josefina served tea Miss Amy, without meeting her maid’s gaze, said she was very sorry for what had happened. Josefina took the unfamiliar words calmly. “Don’t worry, ma’am. You are the owner of the house. What else is there to say?”
“No, I’m not talking about that. I mean about your husband.”
“Well, it’s not the first time there’s been a miscarriage of justice.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What, ma’am? Don’t you know?”
“No, Josefina, tell me.”
Then Josefina did raise her eyes to look directly into the faded eyes of Miss Amelia Dunbar, dazzling the old lady as if her eyes were two candles. She told her mistress that she was going to continue fighting, that when she chose Luis María it was forever and for everything, the good and the bad. She knew that was what they said in the marriage ceremony, but in her case it was the truth. Time passed, the bitterness was greater than the joy, but for that reason love itself got greater and greater, more certain. Luis María could spend his life in jail without doubting for a single moment that she loved him, not only the way she would if they were living together as they had at the beginning but much more, more and more, ma’am, do you understand me? Without pain, without malice, without pointless games, without pride, without arrogance, each of us given to the other.
“Will you allow me to confess something to you, Miss Amelia, without your getting angry with me? My husband has strong hands, fine, beautiful hands. He was born to carve meat. He has a marvelous touch. He always hits the mark. His hands are dark and strong, and I can’t live without them.”
That night, Miss Amy asked Josefina to help her undress and put on her nightgown. She was going to wear the woolen nightgown. The autumn air was beginning to make its presence felt. The maid helped her get into bed. She tucked her in as if she were a child. She arranged the pillows and was about to leave, wishing her good night, when Miss Amelia Ney Dunbar’s two tense, old hands took the strong, fleshy hands of Josefina. Miss Amy brought her maid’s hands to her lips, kissed them, and Josefina embraced the almost transparent body of Miss Amy, an embrace that while never repeated would last an eternity.
7
THE CRYSTAL FRONTIER
For Jorge Bustamante
1
Don Leonardo Barroso was in the first-class section of Delta’s nonstop flight from Mexico City to New York. With him was an incredibly beautiful woman with a mane of long black shiny hair. The hair was like a frame for the striking cleft in her chin, her face’s star. Don Leonardo, in his fifties, felt proud of his female companion. Seated by the window, she was imagining herself in the irregularity, the variety, the beauty, and the distance of the landscape and the sky. Her lovers had always told her she had cloudlike eyelids and a slight storm in the shadows under her eyes. Mexican boyfriends speak in serenades.
Michelina was looking at much the same sight from the sky, recalling the periods in her adolescence when her boyfriends serenaded her and wrote her syrupy letters. Cloudlike eyelids, slight storm in the shadows under her eyes. She sighed. You can’t be sixteen forever. Why, then, did this unwanted nostalgia suddenly return—for her youth, for when she went to dances and was wooed by all the rich boys in Mexico City?
Don Leonardo preferred sitting on the aisle. The idea of being stuck in an aluminum pencil at 30,000 feet, with no visible support, still made him nervous, even if he was used to it. By the same token, he was enormously satisfied that the trip was the product of his own doing.
As soon as the North American Free Trade Agreement had gone into effect, Don Leonardo had begun lobbying intensively to have the migration of Mexican workers to the United States classified as “services,” even as “foreign trade.” The dynamic promotor and businessman explained, in Washington and Mexico City, that Mexico’s principal export was not agricultural or industrial products, not assembly-line products, not even capital to pay the external debt (the eternal debt) but labor. Mexico was exporting more labor than cement or tomatoes. He had a plan to keep labor from becoming a conflict. Very simple: simply avoid the frontier. Prevent illegality.
“They’ll still come,” he explained to Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, “and they’ll keep on coming because you need them. Even if there were too many jobs in Mexico, you’d still need Mexican workers.”
“Legal workers,” said the secretary. “Legals yes, illegals no.”
“You can’t believe in the free market and then suddenly close the doors to
the flow of labor. It’s like closing off investments. What happened to the magic of the marketplace?”
“We have an obligation to protect our borders,” Reich went on. “It’s a political problem. The Republicans are exploiting the growing anti-immigrant sentiment.”
“You can’t militarize the border,” said Don Leonardo, scratching his chin irritably, seeking the same cleft that was the beauty of his daughter-in-law. “It’s too long, too much of a desert, too porous. You can’t be lax when you need workers and tough when you don’t.”
“I’m in favor of everything that contributes to the U.S. economy,” said Reich. “That’s the only way we can contribute to the world economy—and vice versa. So what do you propose?”
What Don Leonardo proposed was already a reality, and it—or rather he—was traveling in tourist class. His name was Lisandro Chávez, and he was trying to look out the window, but the man sitting to his right, staring at the clouds intently, as if recovering a lost homeland, blocked his view. The brim of the man’s lacquered straw hat covered the window. To Lisandro’s left, another laborer slept with his hat pulled down over the bridge of his nose. Only Lisandro traveled hatless, and he ran his hand through his soft black curly hair, then stroked his thick, well-trimmed moustache and rubbed his heavy, oily eyelids.
Boarding the jet, he had immediately recognized the famous businessman Leonardo Barroso in first class. Lisandro’s heart skipped a beat. He also recognized, next to Barroso, a girl he knew when he was young and went to parties and dances in posh parts of Mexico City—Las Lomas, Pedregal, and Polanco. It was Michelina Laborde, the girl everyone wanted to dance with. In reality, what they wanted was to take advantage of her a bit.
“She’s got a good name but she doesn’t have a cent,” the other boys said. “Watch it. Don’t marry her. No dowry.”
Lisandro danced with her once and now no longer recalled if he actually told her or simply thought that the two of them were poor, that they had that in common, that she was invited to these parties because her family had class and he because he went to the same school as the rich kids. But there was more that made them alike than made them different, didn’t she think?