Caramelo

  —The trouble with you is you’re too somber, a nun at school would tell me. Somber. I wonder if the word comes from the same place as sombrero.

  Don’t forget to put on your “sadness.” I won’t. That “sadness” suits you, was made for you, in fact!

  Sadness suits me. I savor it the way some people savor good food. Sleep or sadness, it’s all the same to me. Come get me. Like an ocean hungry to lap you up.

  —Thanks to God we’re here, and we got here safely, Father says, waking me up from my daydreaming. Then Father makes his same joke. —¿Qué tienes, mi vida? Sueño o sleepy.

  —Es que tengo sleepy. I have sleepy, Father.

  I don’t tell Father the truth. This house gives me the creeps, like it’s haunted or something. But how can I tell him that when he’s so happy?

  —Go to mimi. Noches, Father says. —Que duermas con los angelitos panzones. Sleep with the fat little angels.

  The fat little angels, like the ones la Virgen is always stepping on. Like the ones shoving a saint up to heaven, carrying Mary’s blue drapery, or rolling about in the clouds in holy ecstasy.

  The fat little angels. I sigh and pull the sheet over my head like I did when I was little and scared of lizards. Thanks to God somebody believes in something.

  * El rapto is also a film directed by el Indio Fernández, starring María Félix and Jorge Negrete, 1954 It is a Mexican version of The Taming of the Shrew.

  † According to the Star, Raquel Welch’s real name is Raquel Tejada, and she’s Latina. We would’ve cheered if we’d known this back then, except no one knew it except Raquel Tejada. Maybe not even Raquel Welch.

  63.

  God Gives Almonds

  Who opens the door is a crooked branch, speckled, chalky, brittle as birch. I never bother to think what I look like till somebody looks at me like she does. I should’ve worn my good shoes.

  Father begins, —Madam, I beg you, the priest, he is home?

  —Father Ginter isn’t seeing anyone just now. He’s eating … You can come in and wait, though.

  —Most kind.

  Each time we move to a new neighborhood, Father and I have to call on the priest. Just once and never again. The sitting room of every rectory we’ve ever waited in just like this one. Clean. Floor tiles a beige-and-brown checkerboard, always waxed, always glossy, without a scuff mark anywhere. Walls as spotless as a museum. The whole house smelling like chalk and the holy clouds from boiled potatoes.

  —Remember, Lala. Don’t say anything when el padrecito appears, Father whispers. —Not a word, understand? I’ll do the talking.

  To get a tuition break at Resurrection and Immaculate Conception, we’ve come to tell the priest a story.

  —We’ll just tell the priest we’re a family of good Catholics, Father says.

  —But that’s a lie.

  —Of course it’s not, Father says. —It’s a healthy lie. Besides, you want to go to the Catholic high school, no?

  —But I want to go to public school.

  —Mija, please, Father says, because we’ve been over this a hundred times. —Your mother, he adds and sighs.

  While we wait for el padrecito, Father gets up and inspects the couch cushions.

  —Dirt! he mutters. —Like with their feet!

  I wish Father hadn’t insisted on coming straight from the shop. He’s as nubby as a towel. Even his mustache has lint. When he sits back down, I pick the bits of string and tufts of cotton off of him. Father mumbling to himself, making mental calculations. I know what he’s thinking. How long it will take to strip these chairs, redo the varnished legs, tie taut the cotton webbing, retie the coils, redo the whole room in a nice bright fabric, not these ugly scratchy browns that Catholic rectories are fond of. But before Father can come up with an estimate, Father Ginter is here, a man with a big bulldog of a face, like a gangster, though his voice is surprisingly high and kind.

  —I have seven sons, Father says.

  The story begins as it always does, but I never know how it will end

  —Seven sons! My, you must be proud.

  Father means children, not simply boys, but I don’t think Father Ginter understands.

  —I am a good Catholic.

  Not true. Father never goes to church,

  —My sons … here Father pauses for effect, —all, all go to church. Every Sunday. That is how it is in my country.

  Father always lets us sleep in on Sunday mornings except the Sundays we go to the flea market. Then we have to get up early.

  Father Ginter listens, nodding and murmuring praises to Father for being such a devout man.

  —Seven sons! Don’t you worry, Mr. Reyes. We’ll see what we can do.

  —Please, it is the Church’s duty to help us, no? We are very Catholic in my country, understand? You know la Virgen de Guadalupe Church? There I was baptized. My daughter, look at her, always she is talking of following the road of the nuns.

  —Is that right?

  —Yes-yes, yes-yes, yes-yes, yes. Everything nice and clean, she likes. Like nuns.

  —God finds a way of providing for all, doesn’t he? The Lord won’t allow your children to go without a Catholic education.

  —If God wills it, my children, they will have a better life than their poor papa.

  Here Father hangs his head down gently to one side like la Virgen de Guadalupe.

  —Have faith, Mister Reyes. We’ll see what we can do. How old did you say you were, little lady?

  —Fourteen, I say.

  —You don’t say. I would have guessed older. Just goes to show. Don’t you worry. We’ll find something for you, missy.

  At home, all through dinner, Father brags, —You see, you just have to haggle.

  A few days later Father Ginter has found jobs for the boys working after school at a garden nursery. A month goes by, and then halfway into October, Father Ginter sends a note asking me to stop by. What a surprise when he says, —Young lady, how would you like a job as the housekeeper’s assistant?

  My heart freezes. I’m no good at anything that has to do with housework. At least that’s what Mother says. But this isn’t a story you can tell a priest, and I only nod my head and smile.

  I have to report to a Tracy, a high school grad who’s supposed to train me before she goes away for college. She looks like a Tracy, like the perky, freckle-faced girls on the pages of Seventeen, everything, hair, nose, smile, all in a cute little flip. Tracy hands me one of her old uniforms, a fitted seersucker dress, the kind beauticians or women in bakeries wear. I don’t know how I’m supposed to fit into this doll’s dress.

  —Maybe my mother can let it out, I say.

  Tracy walks me through the house, introducing me to the other priests who live here. This is Father So-and-so, and this is Father This-and-That, who reach out and shake my hand hard and call me by my first name like if I was a man. How rude, like barbarians, but they don’t know any better.

  In the laundry room, Tracy shows me my duties. —You just have to check and see if there’s anything to wash. Separate the colors, and set the machine like so. Then here’s the iron. I know this is going to make you laugh, but Father G. likes his boxers starched.

  It doesn’t make me laugh. I keep worrying if I’ll burn anything like I do at home.

  —Then you do this, then that … On and on she goes, naming things I have to do that I’ve never done before or never done well.

  Finally she leads me to the kitchen and introduces me to the woman who answered the door the day Father and I first called, Mrs. Sikorski, thin and gnarled and knotted as a tree in winter snow. Mrs. Sikorski’s kitchen is super clean compared to Mother’s. Everything is neat and in order, even when she’s cooking. Nothing boiling over and spilling. No matches to light the range, it’s electric and quiet. No dried egg yolk on the side of the stove. No smell of fried tortillas. No spattered grease. Everything as spotless as the model kitchens in the appliance section of the Sears. Mrs. Sikorski puts everything away afte
r she uses it. Every salt shaker, every can opener, every glass washed and wiped dry, as soon as possible.

  I feel like the girl in the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale whose father bragged she could spin straw into gold. And now here I am locked in the king’s house being asked to spin, and I don’t know how, and I feel like crying, but if I cry, it will only make things worse and not better. Like peeing, you can’t just cry a little and have no one notice.

  When finally I’m allowed to leave and open the front door, the night wind feels good on my face. I sprint down the steps two at a time. The sky already darkening even though it’s only seven-thirty. Dark the way dark comes down early in the fall.

  I take a bus downtown and have to transfer to another bus. It’s night by the time I get to our neighborhood. I run quickly down the street and not on the sidewalk when I turn onto our block. The huddled houses and the dark scare me. Run down the center of the street, not near the parked cars, like I do in Chicago, so there’s time to escape in case I have to.

  I meant to tell Father Ginter how I never walk home in the dark without a brother. How I’m not allowed to. How I’m used to having someone come for me. How it isn’t done, but I didn’t know how to tell him this, so I just run. The fear still in my throat and in my chest when I get home. The fear from all afternoon. The glass on the front windows filled with the tears of food cooking. Albóndigas and flour tortillas when I step in the door, and that smell, it makes me feel like crying. Except I don’t cry, I don’t say anything but shrug when my mother asks, —Well?

  —I’m not going back there.

  —Why not?

  —Because I’m not.

  —Did somebody do something to you?

  I shake my head no.

  —Well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, you know.

  —But what about my tuition?

  —Well, we’ll just have to find a way, that’s all.

  —But what will I tell Father Ginter?

  —Pops will think of something when he gets home.

  He does.

  —Don’t worry, Lalita. We’ll tell el padrecito that I don’t permit you to return. It’s too dark outside when you come home. How does he expect a young lady to be walking alone after dark? Doesn’t he realize we are Mexican? You tell him I refuse to allow you that maid’s job. You don’t ever have to go back there.

  But I do have to go back there, because it’s me who has to explain to Father Ginter, to Mrs. Sikorski why I can’t work in the rectory as the kitchen assistant. How my mother says I’m no good for anything in the kitchen unless it’s burning rice. How I can’t even iron my own clothes without scorching them. How I need strict supervision anytime I sew anything. Did I tell you I once sewed my shirt to my pants leg when I was trying to sew a button? I’m not meant for the kitchen even though I’m an only daughter.

  When I do the household chores at home it’s things I can do—clean the bathrooms, make beds, wash dishes, scrub pots and pans, mop the floors with pine disinfectant, clean out the refrigerator and pantry. But I don’t know how to set a table for güeros. I don’t know how to iron güero boxer shorts. My father and brothers wear briefs. I don’t know how to cook güero food, or how to work in a kitchen where you put everything away the second after you use it. I try to remember all of this when I make my way to the rectory after school the next day, feeling sick, feeling terrible about telling a lie to a priest, even if it is a healthy lie.

  It’s Mrs. Sikorski who answers the door, who listens to me telling her over the threshold why I can’t come back. —Because my father won’t let me it’s too dark when I come home he says he doesn’t want me coming home after dark because he won’t allow it because I’m a Mexican daughter yes that’s how it is. Sorry. Thank you very much. I am. Sorry. Heartily.

  Mrs. Sikorski says she understands. I don’t know how it is she understands when even I don’t understand. When the door closes with a sigh that smells like the house of güeros, the smell of potatoes, I realize I won’t have to ring the doorbell with the PEACE-BE-WITH-YOU shaped like a fish again, and I skip down the stone steps, running, almost flying.

  In my ears, that saying I’ve heard Father say so many times I don’t hear it. God gives almonds to those without teeth.

  64.

  Sister Oh

  —Should one be a virgin when one marries?

  Who’s asking is a Sister Odilia. Eyes like a magnum. Steely blue. Shark bullet blue. Serious, let’s-get-down-to-business, obsessed-with-sex Oh-dilia. Odilia. Oh. Say oh. Thumb and point finger curled into a circle, her mouth inside that roundness and … —Say Oh. Oh-DEE-lee-ah. That’s right.

  The school year begins with mass assembled in the gym so that the entire student body can join in. The Goody Two-shoes strumming on their hootenanny guitars. It’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” or songs from Godspell, or Jesus Christ Superstar, or if we’re lucky, that song “Suzanne.” When they get to the nasty part, well, all of us up in the bleachers just about piss in our pants.

  After mass they break us into “rap groups” made up with students from every level. No guys from next door invited. Pretty boring if you ask me, until Sister Oh revs up with her sex survey questionnaire.

  —Should one be a virgin when one marries? What about one’s partner? Do you expect your husband to be a virgin on your wedding night?

  Viva Ozuna rolls her eyes and hisses, —Same stupid-ass questions. Only thing that changes is your mind depending when they ask. Freshmen: “Definitely a virgin. No way would my husband want me if I wasn’t. And I don’t want him to have fooled around either. Yuck. Who wants somebody’s leftovers!!!” Sophomore: “I think I should be a virgin I think. But maybe he doesn’t have to be. I mean somebody has to know what they’re doing.” Junior: “I’m not sure.” Senior: “Who the fuck cares?”

  Bozena Drzemala raises a hand. —On my wedding night I’ll just let nature take its course.

  —Everyone knows she’s never been a virgin in her entire life! Viva adds for the information of anyone seated around us, followed by a lot of snickering.

  Xiomara Tafoya, a collar of fat hickeys around her neck, “I call them love bites,” pretty eyes and fuzzy mustache: —It’s not something a lady discusses.

  Wilneesa Watkins, two years younger than us because she was double promoted: —Y’all make me sick.

  Almost an hour of interrogation. Sister Odilia is worse than the FBI. If she calls on me I haven’t a clue what I’ll say. Pretend like I’m a puta or pretend I’m la Virgen de Guadalupe. Which is worse? Either way, everybody’s sure to laugh.

  I decide to say I haven’t decided, which isn’t a lie.

  —It’s important you not go too far in teasing a young man, Sister Oh is saying. —For a man to stop when he’s already … impassioned … is very difficult. It’s different for women. That’s why it’s up to you as young women to make sure you don’t venture too far. It’s enormously difficult for a man to stop once he’s started. It takes an awful, awful, awful lot of control. Why, it’s even painful for him.

  And here she winces as if she’s caught a finger in a car door.

  I’m a virgin. I’m fourteen years old. I’ve never kissed a boy, and nobody’s kissed me. But one thing I know for sure—Sister Odilia doesn’t know shit.

  65.

  Body Like a Raisinette

  —Hey, Wilneesa. You look great! You look like you finally had an orgasm! No other student at Immaculate Conception dares to talk like this but Viva Ozuna, a shorty in wobbly platform shoes. She’s the only senior in our freshman algebra class because she has to make up the course she failed in her first year. —Because that fucking nun hated my fucking guts, she says. Now there’s a new algebra teacher, Mr. Zoran Darko, one of the first lay teachers hired at Immaculate Conception and a fool for Viva’s flirting. She calls him Zorro, and he lets her! Mr. Darko is nothing but a stocky boxer in need of a shave. A real loser. Viva flirts just for the hell of flirting, I guess.

  During cla
ss, Viva passes me notes with all the words written in small letters like e. e. cummings and with little “o”s dotting the “i”s. do you mind sharing the answers with me? i’ll owe you a favor big time. please.

  She has the walleyed chichis of a chihuahua, struts shamelessly about the locker room half naked, like a white girl. —Cause I’m half white, Viva says laughing. —The top half, can’t you tell?

  When classes let out, Viva knots her uniform blouse at the midriff and rolls her skirt up even higher, her ass cleaved in two like a plum. She’s swaybacked, so her butt sticks out even more, a pouty, child’s body like a pinto bean or a raisinette.

  —I saw Janis Joplin in concert last year at the HemisFair, Viva says, flicking her hair off her shoulders. —Got two free tickets from Radio KONO. I’m going to be a songwriter. Got notebooks and notebooks of songs. Soon as I turn eighteen, I’m out of here. Moving to San Francisco.

  —Why don’t you just move to Austin? I say. —It’s cheaper.

  —Shit, you can’t get famous in Texas. Not until you leave. Don’t you know nothing?

  Viva has the kind of thin hair that lies flat on her scalp, like if she just climbed out of a swimming pool. Still, she’s real pretty, except she tweezes her eyebrows into mean arches like the movie stars in the black-and-white movies. I know; I watch her do her makeup all the time. In algebra, in study hall, the bathroom, at the cafeteria table, wherever. It’s a ritual for her. Layers and layers of mascara till her eyelashes are furry. Gobs of lip gloss. Sparkle blush. Eye shadow. Foundation and powder. The works. Even in the daytime. She wants to be a makeup artist, she says. —I thought you said you were going to be a songwriter? —I could be both, why not? She thinks she’s going to do a makeover on me, but she’s not touching my face, that’s for sure! No way!