Caramelo

  Our house looks like something out of Acapulco, like Catita’s house, in fact. Washed-up, rotten, rusted, falling apart. Shipwrecked. That’s what we are. A huge galleon made up of this and that stranded on land.

  All summer we’d been hearing about our wonderful house from Father and the Grandmother, forgetting what exaggeraters they are. With something like the optimism of realtors, Father and the Grandmother see what the house can become, but I see what’s there in front of me.

  All around us are houses as bad off or worse than ours. Houses like bad words meant to shock or scare you. Like chanclas, shoes without backs, squashed and scuffed and sad-looking.

  I start to cry.

  —Don’t cry, Lalita, please! Father says. He cups my face in his hands and makes me blow my nose with the tail of his T-shirt. —It’s that you’re homesick, right? But just think, pretty soon you won’t think of any other home but this.

  This makes me cry even harder. I cry con mucho sentimiento—with feeling, as they say, like a professional. I cry carrying boxes inside the house, and I cry carrying trash out.

  —Cripes, Mother says, —You were a llorona when you were a baby, and you’re still a llorona now. Quit it! What this place needs is some Pine-Sol.

  * My life. That’s what Father calls Mother when he’s not mad. —My life, where did you hide my clean calzones?

  Mijo, my son. What Mother calls him when she isn’t angry. —They’re in the walnut-wood armoire, mijo.

  Mijo, even though she’s not his mother. Sometimes Father calls her mija, my daughter. —Mija, he shouts. Both Mother and I running and answering, —What?

  To make things even more confusing everyone says ma-má, or ¡mamacita! when some delightful she walks by. ¡Ma-maaaaaaa! like a Tarzan yell. ¡Mamacita! like a hiccup.

  If the delight is a he, —¡Ay, qué papacito! Or, —¡papasote! for the ones truly delicious to the eye.

  A terrible incestuous confusion.

  Worse, the insults aimed at the mother, —Tu mamá. While something charming and wonderful is —¡Qué padre!

  What does this say about the Mexican?

  I asked you first.

  61.

  Very Nice and Kind, Just Like You

  —And then what happened?

  —And then her husband ran off with that floozy across the street and was never heard from again. And she said, “Alone at last, thank God!” Tan tán.

  Floozy is one of Mother’s words, from her time not mine, but I use it anyway to make her laugh, and it works. Mother’s in a good mood. We’re helping Father put some order to his shop. Mother’s mopping, and I’m sweeping. Every once in a while, out of nowhere, Mother will ask, —And then what happened? Even though I haven’t been telling a story. It’s kind of a game between us. I have to come up with something out of the blue, the more outrageous the better. It helps pass the time.

  Father was putting up a series of shelves for his fabric sample books, but now he’s talking to a walk-in customer. Some of the people who come in are downright rude. Not the Mexicans. They know to be polite. I mean los güeros. Instead of calling Father “Mister Reyes,” they call Father “Inocencio.” What lack of respect! Qué bárbaros. Pobrecitos. Father says we have to forgive the ignorant, because they know not what they do. But if we know enough about their culture to know what’s right, how come they can’t bother to learn about ours?

  —Hey, that’s right. Where you from, amigo?

  —Mexico. And you, my friend?

  —Oh, well, little bit of everywhere, I guess. Here. There. I was an army brat. My father was with the U.S. Army.

  —I was in the U.S. Army! This during the Second World War, my friend.

  —You’re kidding! I didn’t know Mexicans fought with the Allies.

  —Both in Mexico and here.

  —My dad fought in that war. Saw enough action to get promoted to a post at Camp Blanding.

  —Camp Blanding? I cannot believe! For basic training at Camp Blanding I did too.

  —Well, don’t that beat all! Maybe you knew my dad.

  —Please, your name.

  —Cummings. Dad was Major General Frank Cummings.

  —Oh, my Got! I remember! Everybody loved General Cummings. He was a gentleman.

  —That’s no lie! He sure was a swell guy, my dad.

  —More. He was very nice and very kind. Just like you, my friend. Always, he say, my son, my son. So proud he was.

  —Was he now? Aw, that sure is a heck of a nice thing to hear, especially since he never told me to my face when he was alive. But Dad was like that. I kind of always knew, you know. It sure is nice to hear it, though.

  Father and the big Texan talk and talk and talk for what seems forever. Oh, you’re kidding. No, I swear. Well, I’ll be! Like that. When he finally folds himself into his blue Mustang and drives away, the Texan toot-toots the horn and we all wave, except for Father, who salutes. That’s when Mother lets Father have it.

  —What a liar you are! Mother says. —You didn’t go to Camp Blanding! You went to Fort Ord. Can’t you even tell a story straight? I can’t stand liars.

  —It’s not lying, Father says. —It’s being polite. I only say what people like to hear. It makes them happy.

  —Qué lambiache, Mother hisses, using the word that means “lick.” —That’s what I can’t stand about Mexicans, she continues. —Always full of bullshit!

  —Not sheet, Father corrects her. —Politeness. I am a gentleman. He tips a box of black tacks and pours them onto his palm, then pops a few into his mouth as if they were raisins.

  —Well, güeros don’t see it as polite, if you want the truth, Mother says.

  Father just keeps kissing the magnetic tip of the hammer and hammering the wing chair he’s working on.

  —Do you hear me? Mother says. —Te hablo, I’m talking to you, Inocencio …

  I click on my transistor radio and find a station playing oldies. The Supremes’ “Stop in the Name of Love.” Turn the volume up so loud, I can’t hear a word of Father’s story and Mother’s history.

  62.

  A Godless Woman, My Mother

  In our house votive candles never flicker from bedroom bureaus night and day. No chubby statue of the baby Jesus dressed as the Santo Niño de Atocha, plumed Three Musketeers hat, sandals ragged from running about nights answering prayers, has ever paid us a call. No one burns copal incense for the souls condemned to purgatory or for the souls condemned to life. No dusty rosary swags across the wall above our beds. No Palm Sunday cross collects grease above the kitchen door. No guardian angel picture protects us while we dream. No silver milagros or braids of hair are promised to a favorite saint. Nobody murmurs a novena, and no dinner demands we say grace. We don’t have “the fear” swept from us with the broom. Nobody cures us of the evil eye with an egg. We don’t cross ourselves twice and kiss our thumb when passing a church, nor have we ever asked for the blessing from our parents when we say good-bye. Sunday mornings don’t call us to church. Altars do not command our genuflections. We’re allowed to believe or not believe whatever the nuns and priests teach us at school, and though they tell some pretty stories, what sticks is the stick God stinging across the palms of our hands, and, every month when we pay our tuition late, the horrible God of shame. The happiness God of the dandelions isn’t taught in Catholic school.

  Except for a framed portrait of la Virgen de Guadalupe, God doesn’t visit our house. But the Awful Grandmother does. And brought with her once, along with several pieces of large vinyl luggage, la Guadalupe. This Guadalupe, purchased from a Villita vendor in front of the very hill where the Indian madonna made her miraculous apparition, blessed by the basílica priest, wrapped in a fresh copy of ESTO sports newspaper, tied taut and double-knotted with hairy twine, stuffed alongside a bottle of rompope rum eggnog, bags of Glorias—Father’s favorite chuchulucos, and a year’s worth of La familia Burrón comic books in an ixtle shopping bag—By hand, by hand, just so you know!—ascended into th
e heavens via Aeroméxico, descended, and was delivered to our crowded Chicago flat several years ago, and, at the Grandmother’s request, hung above Father and Mother’s bed. Do this in memory of me.

  —Like hell, Mother muttered under her breath, but Father insisted. Father is a true devotee of mothers, both mortal and divine. Though it could be argued that Mother is a mother too, no one but Mother would argue her seniority over the other two.

  Mother grew up with nothing but suspicion for anyone who represented the Church, even if they weren’t Catholic.

  —Don’t open the door, it’s the alleluia people.

  So why would Mother send us to Catholic school? Not for any love of Church, believe me, but because the public schools, in her own words, are a piece of crap.

  —The whole system is designed to make you fail, Mother says. —Just look at the numbers dropping out. But until it’s the güero kids who are failing in as many numbers as us, nobody gives a damn. Listen to me, Lala. Better to be beaten by priests and nuns than to get a beating from life.

  My brothers think Mother is God. They don’t complain at all about the plans to send them to Resurrection High School downtown. Father says I’m to enroll at their sister school, Immaculate Conception. But if I’m to have any social life, I’ve got to get Mother to send me to the public school on the other side of the freeway.

  This is what I’m thinking as we clean the house on El Dorado Street. The man who owned it left so much stuff for us to cart away, it’s all we can do to shove aside a space to put one foot down. Some of the junk is good, a few air conditioners and window fans we’re already using, because we’ve gotten here at the end of la canícula, August, the dog days, and it’s, like they say here, hotter ’n hell.

  On the kitchen door we’ve kept a 1965 Mexican calendar, a picture called El rapto. A white horse, a handsome charro, and in his rapturous arms, a swooning beauty, her silk rebozo and blouse sliding off one sexy shoulder. The horse raising one hoof in the air, proud as any bronze statue. El rapto.* I wonder if that means “The Rape.” And I wonder if “rapture” and “rape” come from the same word.

  In the living room we’ve inherited a dual portrait of LBJ/Kennedy, which Mother wanted to toss out, but Father asked if we could keep it there. Father’s fond of almost any president.

  —Because he never picks up a newspaper, Mother says.

  The sound of Mother’s hammer banging as if she means to tear the house down. Mother can’t rest until every hole in the house is sealed tight with the lids of tuna and coffee cans—her war against mice and Texas-size bugs. In some rooms the floorboards don’t even meet the walls because of the house shifting, but that doesn’t stop Mother.

  —Why can’t we just call an exterminator?

  —Because we’ve got to cut corners, that’s why.

  It’s always about cutting corners. Always about something shimmering on the wall when you turn on the lights. Or something creepy scurrying off along the floorboards. It’s always, always about being afraid to get up in the middle of the night. And being scared to eat from a half-open box of corn flakes. Tell me about cutting corners.

  —How’s about we make a sacrifice, Ma, and you don’t send us to Catholic school this year. Think of the money we’d save there.

  —I already told you. No, no, and no. You give me enough trouble as it is. Besides, your brothers are going to get part-time jobs to help out. We need to make sure they get a good education for college. You don’t want them to wind up in Vietnam, do you?

  —But I wouldn’t have to take a bus to go to the public school, because I could walk. And nobody’s going to draft me to Vietnam.

  —Look, we can scrimp on lots of things, but not on your education. What if you get married and something happens?

  —Like what?

  —Something. You never know. You might need to be able to take care of yourself, that’s all. Just in case.

  —In case what?

  —Never mind, metiche. Run to the hardware store and buy me some steel wool. And a putty knife. And don’t take all day coming back either.

  Mars told us the guy who lived here was a junk dealer who was too old or too lazy to lift anything but a beer. He was a pack rat who dabbled in this and that, which is why none of the windows match, and why every door in the house looks like it came from somewhere else. But the fact that the house has three bathrooms was a major selling point for Father. One upstairs in a big dormlike room with a pitched roof for the boys. One downstairs, and a small one for the bedroom off the kitchen. This is supposed to be my room, but the Grandmother nabbed it almost as soon as she stepped in the house, because her own apartment in back isn’t ready yet. Right now it’s as dusty as a barn and full of giant cockroaches, too dirty to even put Wilson in there.

  —And where am I to sleep? the Grandmother asked the moment we got here, in a voice as regal as the empress Carlota’s.

  Maybe because it’s the room farthest away from Mother and Father’s room, or maybe because it’s the only room with its own private bathroom, Mother gives her my room. Without even asking me!

  Instead of thank you, the Grandmother says flatly, —Oh, just like when I lived at Regina’s and had my little room next to the kitchen. She means it to hurt Mother, that’s for sure, because the room next to the kitchen in Mexico is always the one for “the girl,” only Mother doesn’t get it, or doesn’t hear her.

  —And me? I ask. —Now what? Do I sleep in the van?

  —I’ll fix you a bed in the front room. Just for tonight, Mother says. —And no complaints. You’re not the only one making sacrifices around here.

  Nothing’s the way Father said. He doesn’t own a shop. He rents. From Mars, because he needs money for supplies for his shop, and later, poco a poco, he intends to buy a shop of his own. And later, little by little, when the Grandmother gets her own place fixed up, I’ll have my room back, the one off the kitchen where a previous tenant glued Raquel Welch’s† poster for One Million Years B.C. on the wall. It was put up with shellac and who knows what; we can’t get it down till the room’s painted. Till then, la Virgen de Guadalupe and Raquel both share a space above the Grandmother’s bed.

  I sleep in the living room. Mornings there’s the annoying rubber screech of black birds called grackles. Now and then a pecan drops and pings against the house like somebody throwing stones at us. By ten, the sun’s so solid and strong it drives awake the dead. Then there’s the noise of the Grandmother slamming cupboards in the kitchen, sneezing like a bugle, shuffling about in her chanclas.

  We’ve opened all the windows and aired the house, but it still smells like it’s been closed up since forever, the smell of mold and dampness, like something creepy is growing in here. There’s also a dry smell of chalk and plaster and dust from the stuff you have to climb over. Tools? Newspapers? Boots? Things that trip you up as you’re climbing the stairs or walking across a room. A sad, hopeless feeling to the house, like a mouth with missing teeth. Old magazines and rubber girdles and tool bits stored in crates or slouched boxes. Wallpaper sticky and dusty. And the smell of insecticide, like someone set off a roach bomb—and that smell catching in your throat and in your eyes and making you cough up phlegm all the time.

  Outside, Texas clouds—wide, loose, and light, like pajamas, but a sun so bright and hot it hurts to stand outside and look at anything. Kids in the street screaming each other’s names—Victor, Rudy, Alba, Rolando, Vincent. And far off, a radio turned to Tejano music with its zippy accordion and its pessimistic bass.

  I’m like that bass. Big. The only sounds coming out of me sad and deep. Mother’s right, I’m never happy unless I’m sad. When night falls, I wander about like Wilson making circles, trying to find a comfortable spot to rest. After the ten o’clock news, I bring down my bed from the closet—the sheets and pillow—and kill time in the dining room by pushing two chairs together and reading until everyone’s cleared out and gone off to sleep, and I can claim the couch.

  Some nights,
like today, the funkadelics arrive.

  To tell the truth, nobody knows what I want, and I hardly know myself. A bathroom where I can soak in the tub and not have to come out when somebody’s banging on the door. A lock on my door. A door. A room. A bed. And sleeping until I feel like it without somebody yelling, —Get up or do I have to make you get up. Quiet. No radio jabbering from on top of the kitchen counter, no TV thundering in the living room. Somebody to tell my troubles to. Something good and soothing to the eye. To be in love.

  All this is well and nice if one day I can have them, but depress me when I think maybe I’ll end up like Hans Christian Andersen, old and dying in a bed he didn’t even own. What good did all that fame do him if he didn’t even have his own room?

  You know the Fifth Dimension? The music group, I mean. “Up, Up, and Away” and “Aquarius.” The funkadelics are like that. A harmony of voices, high and low, except instead of making you feel good, you feel sad—in five gradations. Loneliness, fear, grief, numbness, and despair.

  You can’t row past the funkadelics. At least I can’t. I sort of drown myself in it, fall asleep, my body sodden and soggy. And when I wake, if I’m lucky, it’s a relief to find the funkadelics have worn off like a fever that finally breaks.

  My cousin Paz taught me how to crochet one summer, and it’s a good thing too. It comes in handy when the funkadelics arrive. I buy a ball of cotton string and a double-zero needle at the Woolworth’s and crochet a dirty knot of lace because my hands always sweat, and I can’t keep the string clean. There’s a poem by García Lorca we had to memorize once in school. It has a line that goes “Who will buy from me this sadness of white string to make handkerchiefs?” Something like that. It sounds kind of goofy in English. ¿Quién me compraría a mí, este cintillo que tengo y esta tristeza de hilo blanco, para hacer pañuelos? This sadness of white string. That’s how I feel when I get the funkadelics. An endless white string full of tiny knots.