—What?
—What do they call you?
—Ernie.
—No, I mean, haven’t you got a nickname or something? What do they call you at home?
—Ernie, you say again, and this time you give a little tee-hee like a comic-strip cartoon.
Ernie! I let go a sigh. It lacks dignity, respect, mystery, poetry, all the ingredients necessary to fall in love. Only how can I tell you that?
—I’ll call you Ernesto.
And that’s what I call you. Since the night of the falling stars when we didn’t see any falling stars. Ernesto, then and since.
77.
On the Verge of Laughable
Just like that picture on the Mexican calendar, El rapto, Ernesto arrives in my life to rescue me. His white pickup waiting at the school curb every day at three, saving me from Cookie Cantú and her desesperadas. I’ve always been a daydreamer, but all I need is for Ernesto to look at me and remind me I’m not a ball of light, a dust mote spiraling in a sunbeam.
He’s a porcelain salt shaker, my Ernesto. Muy delicado is how they would describe him in Spanish, muy fino, as if he was a cigar. With a face and hands that sweat a lot, and a slight hunch to his thin shoulders as if his body is saying, —Don’t hit me.
Up until Ernesto, Father gave any boy who came near me that eye of the rooster he’s famous for, a sideways once-over as if he’d suddenly had a seizure and can’t look at you face-to-face. But with Ernesto, well, I guess he’s just satisfied he’s Mexican.
I believe in la Divina Providencia. The Calderón family is from Monterrey, Mexico, and they travel back and forth from Texas to Nuevo León all the time. When Ernesto saw me put sour cream on my enchiladas and didn’t say, —Yech—like the other kids from San Antonio, I just knew. I don’t have to explain everything, about the different foods we eat depending on the different regions our families come from—the desert north of Mexico with their flour tortillas, the Yucatán south with their fried bananas and black beans. The pink-skinned beans and the black-skinned beans, the pink-skinned Mexicans and the black-skinned Mexicans, and all the Mexican shades in between. Ernesto doesn’t have to ask me if I’m Mexican. He knows.
Okay already. Just the sight of me and Ernesto together makes people laugh. Because he’s so Catholic, my brothers call him “the altar boy” behind his back, and me “Lala, the lady wrestler” to my face, but it only makes me want to protect Ernesto even more from the cruelty of the world. Me, I’m used to it, but pobre Ernesto with his heart like a soft-boiled egg, he hasn’t a clue.
To tell the truth, Ernesto Calderón is corny. Not quite funny, but funny himself. On the verge of laughable. Know what I mean? His jokes always a little off.
—So the teacher asks Juanito to use the words “liver” and “cheese” in a single sentence.
And Juanito says, “Liver alone, cheese mine.”
Lo más triste is Ernesto at parties. He does card tricks and bad impersonations—an Irish brogue, an Italian tourist, a Hindu holy man. Pathetic. And the saddest thing is he thinks he’s pretty good. Poor thing.
He has a sexy voice, Ernesto does. A velvety velour to it, like the Prince Popo paintings painted on black velvet you find at the flea markets. As regal as a drum. But the worst laugh on Earth, I’m not kidding. Goofy as a hyena. The kind that makes people in a restaurant look up from their plates and ask, —My God, what’s that?
And when he laughs he throws his head back like a cartoon hippopotamus, tonsils showing and the bottom of his molars exposed. I can see all his dental work, but what surprises me is that he has extra teeth alongside his molars, a whole extra set like a monster or something, only it’s not a detail you can point out. —Hey, you’ve got extra teeth, huh? Especially with his being so sensitive, so I don’t say anything.
Ernesto takes me to see The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but believe it or not, when we get to the theater we find it’s paired with a funky Elvis-in-concert movie. Of course, it’s the Elvis film that’s first and lasts forever. Neither Ernesto nor me can stand Elvis, but what are we going to do? We got here early. I tell him about how my cousin is named after Elvis and how my grandmother had a fit every time she heard his name, because of what Elvis said about Mexicans.
—No lie?
—Swear to God. Ask my brothers if you don’t believe me.
Somebody in the back blows their nose like a bugle playing reveille. Christ Almighty! I look over my shoulder, and way off in the last row I see an old lady dabbing her face with a handkerchief.
Then Ernesto does something that makes me forget everybody else in the theater. He makes a little circle on my hand with one finger, a spiral round and round with spit. I have to shut my eyes, it makes the skin tingle, all the hair on my body stands up. Until a viejita down the row from us starts hacking a throatful of phlegm, a nasty business that’s a real mood breaker.
Ernesto keeps playing with my hand, moving up my wrist, oblivious to everything but me, only I can’t keep from peering over at the hacker—an old fart who looks just like my grandmother—till Ernesto takes my face in his hands and gives me a kiss that tastes like popcorn and pot. Honest, he takes me so off guard, I almost ignore the coughing coming from the row behind us.
Somebody must be unwrapping a taco or torta, because the place smells like fried meat. That’s when I jerk my eyes open and see her. Her with her stink of barbacoa! The Awful Grandmother sitting right behind me watching me being kissed by Ernesto Calderón!
—Oh, my God, I say, pushing Ernesto off of me. I grab my purse and bolt toward the exit doors like if the place is on fire.
Ernesto catches up with me in the lobby by the hot dogs, but the smell of meat makes me feel like gagging.
—Ernesto, just take me home, okay? Please. I think I’m sick.
—What about The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?
—I’ve already seen the bad and the ugly. The good can wait.
I don’t tell Ernesto about the Grandmother. Later, when we’re in the truck and I’m feeling better, I begin to think maybe it was just someone who looked like my grandmother. It just spooked me, that’s all. That’s how it is after Ernesto blasts me back to the real world with a cheeseburger and fries at Earl Abel’s and a bad joke about Elvis Presley.
The worst thing about Ernesto is he does crazy things that are idiotic or cocky, like wearing a Levi’s jacket with a marijuana plant painted on the back in Magic Marker. I mean, why do that? Might as well wear a sign that says to the cops, BUST MY ASS.
Shameless people like Ernesto amaze me. I wonder if this overconfidence comes from his being the man of the family. His father died a long time ago, and it’s always been just him and his mom and sisters. Maybe his mother and sisters did the reverse of what my brothers did to me. Laughed at every joke, encouraged him to sing out loud as a child, applauded too much his performances at birthday parties, and brainwashed him by saying over and over, —Oh, Ernie, you kill me.
But I love him, corny jokes and everything. The truth, I love Ernesto because he’s a goofus. Because he reminds me of my six brothers. Because he isn’t anything like my six brothers. Because of his stupid sixth-grade humor, his boring card tricks, bad singing, and terrible posture. Weak chin, horrible laugh, skinny arms, and all. So Ernesto Calderón’s not cool and handsome. So what? Don’t matter. He’s cool and handsome.…
… To me.
78.
Someday My Prince Popocatépetl Will Come
—Marry someone who adores you, Mother said once.
—Listen, you want a good life, make sure you’re adored. Adored, you hear me? Lala, I’m talking to you. Everything else is crap, she said, ransacking the trash for the missing basket from her electric percolator. —Now where the hell did that coffee thingamajig go?
Maybe I’d met that someone who adored me. Could it be Ernesto Calderón was him? I’d had a dream about Ernesto even before I met Ernesto, and when he did appear, it was like I was trying to remember someone I already knew,
someone I’d always known, even when I was floating around the Milky Way as milky dust.
Because of Father, I’m used to being adored. If somebody loves me they’ve got to say corny Mexican things to me, or I can’t take them seriously. It makes me dizzy to hear Ernesto tell me, —Baby, if I die who will kiss you? You’re my life, my eyes, my soul. I want to swallow you, masticate you, digest you, shit you.
Is that heavy or what?
So when Ernesto comes around on the very morning Mother’s lecturing me on marriage, I don’t know what to think. After all, maybe Ernesto Calderón is my destino.
—Listen up, Ernesto. You’ve got to ask my parents for their permission.
—For what?
—To marry me, silly, what else?
—Very nice. You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?
I shrug, pleased with myself.
—Only you forgot one thing, Ernesto says. —You didn’t ask me!
—Not with words exactly. With my body and soul.
—But don’t you think we’re too young to get married?
—We can be engaged till we’re old enough. Lots of people do that.
—Look, don’t even. I’m going to get in trouble, Ernesto says. —Forget about it.
—Don’t you want to make us all right in the sight of God? You’re the one always complaining I give you religious conflicts.
—God I can handle. It’s my ma I worry about.
—Well, don’t you want to?
Ernesto chews on the chain of his Virgen de Guadalupe medalla and looks at his sneakers. Then I hear him say, —Okay, I guess.
My heart winces, as if I’d let go a well rope, the bucket singing to the bottom. Too late. Ernesto is already on the other side of the screen door, saying hello to Mother, who’s ignoring him.
I don’t know why, but Mother has to choose today to experiment in the kitchen. The hottest month of the year, on the hottest dog day. Mother isn’t a cook. She hardly ever cooks anything but stock Mexican ranch food—fideo soup, rice and beans, carne guisada stew, flour tortillas. But once in a while she gets these crazy ideas to create something new, and today is one of those onces.
When Father’s truck crunches in the driveway, the house is hotter than ever, even with all the fans going. Mother’s project is a foreign recipe she clipped from the pages of the San Antonio Express-News—chicken-fried steak—güero food. She spent the day preparing exotic items we could just as easily have ordered at the Luby’s cafeteria—green beans with almonds, broccoli casserole, candied yams, pecan pie—but Mother swears, —Nothing beats homemade. And now here’s Father blowing in like a northern wind across the plains states, swirling everything in his path.
—¡Vieja! My papers! Father says shouting. —Zoila, Lala, Memo, Lolo, everybody, quick! ¡Mis papeles!
—What’s happened?
—¡La Migra! Father says, meaning the Immigration. —They came to the shop today, and what do you think? Somebody told them I hire ilegales. Now they want proof I’m a citizen. Zoila, where are my discharge papers? Help me look for my papers!
When the Grandmother died, her photo and the framed Virgen de Guadalupe were moved to the living room next to the dual portrait of Presidents LBJ and Kennedy. That’s when we had to stop watching television.
—To honor my mother, vamos a guardar luto. No television, no radio, Father had ordered. —We are in mourning.
Then he went into every room and drew all the curtains. He also covered the mirrors because that’s the custom on the other side, but when we asked him why, he simply said, —Because it’s proper. Maybe we weren’t supposed to be thinking about how we look, or maybe he meant to keep Death from looking at us.
We lived without the jabbering of the television and radio for a while, like the house needed time to think, to remember, to think. When we talked we even lowered our voices like if we were in church. But we weren’t in church. We were in luto.
The mirrors stayed covered for only a few days, but the curtains have been drawn tight ever since. Father’s already ripping them open and filling the house with the steel-white Texas light of August. Dust swirls in the air.
—Buenas tardes, señor.
—Ernesto! Be of some use and help me look for my shoe box.
Father unlocks the walnut-wood armoire, dumping the contents of the drawers on the bed.
—They’re coming back for me after lunch, he goes on. —Mother of the sky, help me!
Ernesto whispers to me, —Why’s he looking for a shoe box?
—That’s where he keeps all our important papers and stuff. Before Father inherited the walnut-wood armoire, he stashed everything in his underwear drawer. Now he stores them in a shoe box from one of his wing tips. But since we moved, well, who knows where the hell it is?
—But why would someone report you to la Migra, señor?
—The envy. People yellow from jealousy. How do I know, Ernesto? This is no time for talk, help me!
—Did you tell them you served in the U.S. Army, Father?
—I told, I told.
Then I imagine Father talking to the INS officers. Father’s English has never been good. When he’s nervous it comes out folded and creased, worse than in those old books he’d sent away for when he first came to this country and worked for Mister Dick. How you say?
—I told about Inchon; Pung-Pion; Fort Bragg; New Cumberland, Pennsylvania; Fort Ord; SS Haverford Victory; Peggy Lee, get out of here give me some money too. I even told a story.
—A story?
—How on our first trip to Tokyo we had to turn back to the Honolulu hospital when those güeros broke their arms and legs. You know how they like to sunbathe. They lay out on the deck, but then, what do you think? Out of nowhere the sea turned wild on us. I swear to you. A big wave came and rocked the boat like a hammock. A whole shipload of soldiers tumbled off the deck and wound up with broken arms and legs, and because of this we had to turn back. Ha, ha! What do you think la Migra said then? “We don’t need stories, we need papers.” Can you believe it! We don’t need stories, we need papers! They even asked about your brothers, Lala. Thanks to God they were born on this side.
We turn the house upside down, but we can’t find Father’s shoe box. All the while Ernesto is pecking at Father, trying to find a way in to talk about him and me, but Father keeps saying, —Later, later. Father’s desperate. We find drawers stuffed with old bills, letters, class photos, drapery rings, homemade birthday cards, food coupons, rubber bands, Wilson’s rabies tags, but no shoe box. Father always prides himself on being organized. In his shop, every tool, every bolt of fabric, every box of tacks is in place, a scrap swept away before it hits the floor. It drives everyone nuts. But at home, Mother’s chaos rules.
—All I ask for is one drawer for myself, is that too much? One little drawer and everyone sticks their hands in here. Zoila, how many times have I told you, don’t touch my things!!!
—I’m not the only one who lives here, Mother wails. —Always, always blaming me, I’m sick and tired …
—Sick and tired, Father parrots in English. —Sick and tired … disgusted!
Everything has happened so fast after the Little Grandfather’s death, after the Grandmother’s stroke, after packing up and leaving one city for another, and then another, burying the Grandmother, giving away her things, the quarrels, the arguments, the not speaking, the shouting, and slowly life settling down for us to begin all over again. And now this.
—My things, my things, Father says, pulling his hair and jumping up and down like a kid having a tantrum. —They’re coming back after lunch!!! And he whips back the drapes in each room, opens closets and dresser drawers, pokes under the bed.
—You’re nuts, Mother says. —You act like they’re going to deport you. I’ll call the INS and see what’s what.
Mother gets on the phone, and starts talking her English English, the English she speaks with los güeros, nasally and whiny with the syllables stretched out long l
ike wet laundry on the clothesline. —Uh. huh. Yesssss. Mmm-hhhhmm. That’s right. But after a while she hangs up because they put her on hold for too long.
—Now? Ernesto asks, meaning, Should I ask him now?
—No, Ernesto, wait!
Lolo and Memo have their lawn-mowing business to worry about. With the heat, they only do hard work in the early morning or after dusk. They save the hottest part of the day for the public pool. Only Lolo is home when Father appears, and when the shoe box doesn’t turn up right away, he starts worrying he’ll miss his appointment at the pool.
—So your friends are more important than your father? Father says. —This is an emergency. Lolo and Ernesto, please—go look for Memo. Bring him home now!
That’s how it was we’re all home when the shoe box turns up.
—Here it is, Mother says, disgusted.
—But where was it?
—In the ropero, she says. —The walnut-wood armoire.
—But who put it there? I looked in there.
—Your mother. How do I know? It was there.
Ernesto is plucking my elbow and twitching his eyebrows. —Not now, Ernesto, I whisper.
It isn’t enough, though, that the box is found. We all have to climb in the van and accompany Father to his workshop on Nogalitos Street, even Ernesto. —Five minutes, Father says. —I promise. But after what seems like forever, when it seems Father has hauled us all to witness nothing, the INS drive up in those famous green vans. There are two officers, and what’s really sad is one of them is Mexican.
—Now you see, I no lie, Father says, waving his papers. One dated the 23rd of November, 1949, said he was honorably discharged from the Armed Forces, and the other says:
Private Inocencio Reyes ASN 33984365 has successfully completed the Special Training Course conducted by this Unit and is graduated this twenty-first day of June 1945 at New Cumberland.
But the one Father is proudest of is signed by the president.
—This one, Lala, you read to everybody, Father says.