The Grandmother unfolds it to its full width across the bed. How nice it looks spread out, like a long mane of hair. She plays at braiding and unbraiding the unfinished strands, pulling them straight with her fingers and then smoothing them smooth. It calms her, especially when she’s nervous, the way some people braid and unbraid their own hair without realizing they’re doing it. With an old toothbrush, she brushes the fringe. The Grandmother hums bits of songs she doesn’t know she is humming while she works, carefully unworking the kinks and knots, finally taking a comb and nail scissors to snip off the ragged ends, holding the swag of cloth in her arms and sniffing its scent. Good thing she thought to burn dried rosemary to keep it smelling sweet all these years.
When the Grandmother had slept in the pantry of Regina Reyes’ kitchen, she’d tied her wages in a knot in one end of this rebozo. With it she had blown her nose, wiped the sleep from her face, muffled her sobs, and hiccuped hot, syrupy tears. And once with a certain shameless pharmacist named Jesús, she had even used it as a weapon. All this she remembers, and the cloth remembers as well.
The Grandmother forgets about all the work waiting but simply unfolds the caramelo rebozo and places it around her shoulders. The body remembers the silky weight. The diamond patterns, the figure eights, the tight basket weave of strands, the fine sheen to the cloth, the careful way the caramelo rebozo was dyed in candy stripes, all this she considers before rolling up the shawl again, wrapping it in the old pillowcase, and locking it back in the walnut-wood armoire, the very same armoire where Regina Reyes had hid Santos Piedrasanta’s wooden button until her death, when someone tossed it out as easily as Santos had knocked out her tooth. As easily today as someone tossing out a mottled-brown picture of a young man in a striped suit leaning into a ghost.
54.
Exquisite Tamales
—Sister, please, I can’t help it Mother wanted me to settle all this. Pobrecita. You know how she depends on me. Father says this as he ties another box shut with twine.
The Grandmother, Memo, and Lolo have been gone all morning running errands, and the house is finally quiet. Because the dining room is almost empty, Father’s voice has a strange tinny echo. The big blond dining room table and heavy chairs were sold and carted away before we even got here. The walls are empty. All the Grandmother’s fancy dishes and glassware are gone too. There’s nothing left in the room except the chrome chandelier, a beat-up end table, and some wooden folding chairs.
—And what am I? Painted? Don’t I count for something around here? Aunty Light-Skin says, reappearing from the bedroom with another armload of linen. —I made sacrifices to be here too, but do you think she ever says thank you? I don’t know why I even bother. I should’ve taken off to Veracruz with Zoila and Toto. Zoila has the right idea.
—Don’t be like that. The only reason Zoila agreed to come was because I promised her a vacation. But you and I, we’re blood. Mother expects us here. Don’t take the things she says so hard. And, if it makes you feel any better, I appreciate you. I couldn’t close up this house without you, little sister. Too many—Lala, bring me a knife or scissors—too many memories.
—It’s just that you don’t know. No sooner do I step in the courtyard than I remember why I left. She’s terrible. She won’t throw anything away. Look at these old sheets. Mended over and over; they look like Frankenstein. But what do you think? I found brand-new sheets in the closet! I swear to you! Brand-new. Still wrapped in their store packaging! What’s she saving them for? Her funeral? Look, I try to help, and when I do, she snaps at me, “This is my house, not yours!” Remember those stories Father used to tell us about how his mother hoarded things? Well, that’s the disease Mother’s got. You’re not going to believe this, but I found a slice of birthday cake in the freezer that she’d been saving since your last party, the year the ceiling fell down, I’m not lying. Antonieta Araceli was thirteen then, so that means … seven years ago! What a barbarity!
—Ay, qué mamá, Father says, shaking his head and laughing. —Pobrecita.
—Don’t start. There’s nothing pobre about her.
—You’re just like your father. He wants everything he sees, the Grandmother says, scolding me as we dodge, shove, and stumble through the Zócalo crowds.
—It’s because it’s been a long time, I explain.
To tell the truth, every trip back it’s like this, whether I’ve been away a long time or short.
What I want is a balloon. The Mexican kind herded in front of plazas or in the parks. Balloons the way I remember them, wearing a paper hat, balloons painted with pretty swirls, or with a clown face. The balloon vendor whistling his shrill balloon-vendor’s whistle. The sound of that whistle calling kids outdoors like the Pied Piper.
—Really, Celaya, don’t you think you’re too old for a balloon? Look at yourself. You’ve got the body of a man and the mind of a child. I bet you’re taller than your father. How tall are you? How much do you weigh?
—I’m the same height as Father, except he’s shrunk a little with age, I say. —And as far as weight, I don’t know how to explain it in kilos.
I do so, but I’m not about to get the Grandmother started on that. I bet I could pick up Father and carry him on my back if I had to. The Grandmother says it’s the milk we drink in the U.S. that makes us all giants.
—Well, make sure I’m not with you when you buy that balloon, the Grandmother adds, huffing and puffing because she walks as if she’s running. —You’ll make a fool of yourself, believe me. That’s for certain.
I’ve been waiting for the right moment to escape to La Villa. In front of the basílica there are pumpkin-flower quesadillas. Milk gelatins. Hot-off-the-griddle “fatties” wrapped in bright twists of “Chinese paper.” Mexican pink. Circus yellow. Orange. Royal blue. All of this I’ve been dying for since we first started our trip south.
But now the Grandmother can’t be bothered with my antojos. My cravings don’t count.
The Grandmother is anxious to find tamales for Father’s tamal sandwich, tamales wedged in between a crusty bolillo, a meal so thick and heavy it hurts when you swallow.
—Mother, all I want is two things, Father says moments after we arrive. —A breakfast bowl of nata. And. A tamal sandwich.
—Ay, mijo. Why didn’t you say so? I’ll run downtown and get you the most exquisite tamales in all of Mexico. I know an old woman who cooks divinely. Like an angel. You won’t believe it.
—Mother, don’t bother. I’ll get tamales here at La Villa. I can send Memo and Lolo.
—Memo and Lolo! Are you joking? With their pocho Spanish nobody will understand what they’re saying. No, I’ll go downtown myself, tomorrow, I insist. The tamales I mean to buy are exquisitos. And as for the nata, you shall have it for your breakfast, God willing. Inocencio must have his nata. Inocencio will get his nata, with a nice knob of fresh bolillo bread to scoop it up with—no, my king? When you were little you could never finish your breakfast. I’d wait till you left for school and then I’d finish your breakfast for you, and the food always tasted sweeter because it was yours. I swear to you! What a sentimental old lady your mamá has become, telling you her secrets. Oh, don’t laugh at your mamá, come here and let me hug you! Who loves you? That’s right, tu mamá. You have no idea. Why, when I have you sleeping under my roof, I finally get some sleep. Even my dreams are more beautiful when you’re here. When I die, then you’ll realize how much your mamá loved you, right?
A tamal sandwich.
The Grandmother takes me with her to fetch the exquisite tamales. It’s Father’s idea, not hers, not mine. We have to ride a bus downtown and walk a few blocks too. The Grandmother walks like she always does, trotting in front of me, always in a hurry, pulling me by the wrist instead of by the hand. Every once in a while she turns around and snaps at me for dawdling, but when I try to keep up, she complains I’m tripping on the heels of her shoes.
I lope about as if I’m invisible, until somebody stares at me and rem
inds me I’m not a ball of light, a dust mote spiraling in a sunbeam. Lately the Grandmother has taken to talking to me only to complain. —Stand up straight, Celaya. I can’t stand looking at you walking about like the hunchback of Notre Dame. Why do you insist on wearing your hair like that? Can’t you at least pin back your bangs? You look like a sheep dog. The last time I saw you, you were a normal little girl. And now look. You’re as big as a Russian. Don’t you think you should exercise and try to look more feminine?
Leave me the hell alone. But of course I don’t say this. I say, —All the girls in my class look like me.
Not true. It’s bad enough Mother won’t buy me a bra yet.
—But Maaa! Everybody in eighth grade wears a bra except me, some since the fourth grade even. And I start high school this fall! It’s disgusting!
—Forget it! I’m not wasting good money on something you don’t even need! And quit your moping. You’re not changing my mind!
When it comes down to it, I guess I inherited the worst of both families. I got Father’s face with its Moorish profile, a nose too big for my face, or a face too small for my nose, I’m not sure which. But I’m all Reyna from the neck down. A body like a tamal, straight up and down. To top it off, I’m way taller than anyone in my class, even the boys. The last thing I need is the Grandmother pointing out my charms. No wonder I’m always depressed.
Thank God there’s enough freaks downtown to make even me look normal—so many strange sights, you don’t know where to look. On a cardboard-box table at the curb, a stocky little cigar of a man is whipping up a huge mound of what looks like shaving cream. Concha nácar, abalone cream. He whips it up with a plastic playing card, whipping and whipping, and it seems crazy to see a big pile of white whipped cream plopped out on the counter like that, naked, without even a bowl.
—Para curar barros, espinillas, manchas, cicatrices, paño negro, jiotes, acné, quemaduras, y manchas de varicela. Guaranteed to make your skin whiter, more beautiful, more brilliant. Volunteers? How about you, doll? But the Grandmother yanks me when I pause.
Downtown is changed from how I remember it, or could it be I remember it all wrong? Walls are dirtier, more crowded, graffiti painted on buildings like in Chicago. Mexico City looks more like cities in the U.S., as if it suddenly got sick and tired of keeping itself clean.
And the sidewalks, buckled and crooked. You have to watch where you’re going. There are huge, dangerous holes like underground caves, some with pieces of metal pipes snaking out. If you don’t look out, you could have an accident. I think this must be why almost every other person I see downtown has an eye patch, or a big gauze Band-Aid on his face.
At a certain corner that smells of roasting corn, the Grandmother turns and tugs me down a dark courtyard. In a doorway, an old woman in a speckled black rebozo is standing over a smoky aluminum brazier. The Grandmother loads up the basket we brought with us with enough tamales to last us a week.
The afternoon rain arrives just as we hurry and make our way to the bus stop. The Grandmother and I have to wait under a CANADA shoe store awning to keep dry. A big crowd of tired-looking people getting out from work waits with us. It’s getting darker and darker, later and later, and buses marked LA VILLA come and go, but they don’t even stop because they’re already clogged with people, some hanging from the open doors and back bumpers like in a Familia Burrón comic.
Finally a bus stops.
—Push, push, the Grandmother instructs.
A jowly man with bad skin gets in front, waits till the doors open, then shoves everyone aside. —Let la señorita get on first, he commands. Some people look disgusted, some people shove back, but the man holds firm, parting the crowd like Moses parting the sea. —La señorita first, he repeats. The Grandmother pushes me forward, and it’s only then I realize he means me!
La señorita! I can’t believe it. Even though the bus is crowded and smells of wet wool and tamales, all the ride back I can’t stop thinking that somebody held a mob full of wet, grumpy people aside so I could go first! And called me la señorita!
The blood arrives in the daytime when Aunty isn’t home. Nobody’s home except the Grandmother. And Father. The blood isn’t a story you can tell your father. There’s no one else to tell but her.
—You mean to say your “rule” hasn’t descended yet? A big lug of a girl like you? What was your mother thinking? She should’ve taken you to the doctor ages ago like I told her and gotten you injections!
Then the Grandmother makes little clucking noises like an angry hen and goes off to look for something for me to wear down there.
When I asked my friends what it would be like, they said to expect a nervous drip like a leaky faucet. Or something skittish like kite string. Or a slow trickle like tree sap. Lies. The blood’s like the body swallowing backward. But from down there.
It’s in the pink bathroom of the house on Destiny Street that the blood first appears, the bathroom with the huge tomb of a tub big enough to drown in, the floor of white octagons, the hundred times I’ve balanced on the tub ledge pushing the windows of pebbled glass open when the balloon vendor went past whistling his balloon-vendor whistle.
I don’t know why, but the Grandmother doesn’t come back with a box of sanitary pads. She hands me a plastic bag of Red Cross cotton, a box of Kleenex, and two safety pins.
—Here. This is much better, believe me. Make yourself a cotton sandwich and wrap a tissue around it. Don’t start with your faces. You don’t know how lucky you are. At least you don’t have to wash out rags like I did when I was your age. But did I complain?
In the old apartment Father, Mother, and I slept in when I was little, the one upstairs, closest to the street, Aunty Light-Skin and I share a room. The room smaller than I remember, the big double bed replaced now with two twins.
How long is the blood supposed to last? Five days? Six? Seven? On day ten, I get scared and ask Aunty. —Don’t worry, my soul. It’ll stop soon. She brings me manzanilla tea and a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel, and talks to me from her twin bed, talking and talking until I fall asleep and dream she is talking to me.
A balloon. All I want is a balloon, for crying out loud. Is that too much to ask for? Everyone’s too busy with the closing up of the house to go with me. I tell Father I’ll go alone.
—¿Sola? Alone? How, Lala? Take the girl with you at least.
—No, the girl’s been sent to fetch more boxes. Let Celaya go, the Grandmother says, —Better she’s out of our way.
Finally! I thought they’d never let me out of that prison. I think of the Grandmother’s warnings when I cross over the courtyard and let myself out the gate. Don’t play out in the street, something could happen to you! And I laugh thinking how hysterical the Grandmother was with us when we were kids.
Destiny Street seems smaller than I remembered it, too. Noisier. Could it have gotten noisier, or could it be I forgot the noise? Huge trucks rumble and belch down our street and cut across to Misterios, tanks of gas on the back flatbed clanking dangerously, the stink and dust making me glad to reach the avenue.
At the corner, I turn and walk down the route Candelaria and I used to walk toward the tortillería, and I look at the doorways and try to remember where I would abandon Cande and where she would abandon me in the blind man’s game we played. Here is the shop where the Grandfather always stopped to talk to the tailor, and here’s the kiosk where he picked up his newspapers, and here the store where I bought the milk gelatins with the pesos Grandfather gave us. I pause at the doorway. An old man behind the counter with the same pelt of white hair and scent of a good cigar like the Little Grandfather. Suddenly I feel funny, a sadness and tenderness all mixed together. Until the old guy looks up and starts making smacky kisses at me. I forget about buying anything and hurry toward La Villa.
Men in the street, alone and in groups, look at me and say things to me. —Where are you going, my queen? Only not the way Father says it. I walk fast like I’m late, and keep my
eyes on the sidewalk.
In the gutter, the bone of a mango with wisps of golden hair. A half-eaten corncob. Satellites of green iridescent houseflies. How come I never remembered being scared?
From far away the lopsided figure of the church that leans into the basílica like a borracho. On the corner before crossing to the church plaza, a man more raggedy than Cantinflas, un borrachito slouched like a sack of dirty laundry. What is that bulging out from his belt? I don’t think anything of it until I get closer.
Ay, it’s his thing. Worse—a green fly is sitting on it like a big green sequin!
¡Córrele, córrele! Run, run! My heart racing several steps ahead of me. Ay, qué feo, feo, feo. A little shudder goes through me when I make my way around the corner and turn back to the Grandmother’s house on Destiny Street. I forget about the balloons, the milk gelatins, the cookie vendors in front of the church, the pumpkin-flower quesadillas, the sandwich of cotton wadded between my legs. I forget everything on the way to the Grandmother’s house except what I wish I could forget, that man’s ugly pipi with the fly on it.
When I get back, I throw myself on the bed, and pretend to be sick from my period, and that’s how I get out of having to eat a plate of mole the Grandmother has waiting for me. —No, thank you.
Curl myself into a question mark and pull the blanket over my head. I try not to think, but the things I try not to think about keep bobbing to the surface like drowned people. A green, white, and red gelatin with a dead bug curled on it. A corncob in the gutter. A hairy mango bone. A fly on a drunk man’s pipi. A thick wad of cotton like a tamal sandwich between my legs. A river roaring in my brain. Muddy water sweeping everything along.