Caramelo

  This time we ride in the car. Father has to go to work, and he’s already late. I must be crying, because Father is saying, —Don’t cry anymore, don’t cry anymore—over and over, gently and very quietly like he’s the one crying.

  When we get to my classroom, I remember Father standing in the doorway a long time, even after the door is closed. Inside the narrow door window, his long, thin face with the eyes like little houses.

  I fall asleep with all my clothes on, on top of the chiffon bedspread, without bothering to get under the covers, and wake up with my head hurting, my mouth dry. Fumble to the bathroom, flick on the lights, and it’s her! The Grandmother’s face in mine. Hers. Mine. Father’s. It scares the hell out of me, but it’s only me. Amazing the way I look different now, like if my grandmother is starting to peer out at me from my skin.

  —What you looking at? I say in my toughest voice. But she hasn’t appeared to me since I crossed the border. I suppose she’ll arrive with Father. And she’ll let me have it. Foolish girl! Your father loves you, and you chose to leave! I would never abandon someone who loves me. Why, in my day, my own father abandoned me, and I never forgot or forgave him. And here you are, ungrateful little fool.

  I go over what I’m going to say:

  It’s that I thought, we thought we’d get everybody’s permission for us to marry. We thought this way we wouldn’t be refused.

  I can’t tell Father it was all my idea, that I made Ernesto “steal” me, can I? That’s not the kind of story you can tell your father. I don’t want to hurt him even more, so I won’t say anything I’ve decided. I won’t cry like a girl either.

  But when Father and Memo arrive, my heart hurts. Memo marches into the room first, shaking his head like I’m an idiot. I’m sure Father has made him swear not to say anything to upset me, because all he does is give me that look and shake his head, like I’m too stupid to even talk to. Then, before Father steps in, he adds, —Man, Lala.

  —Mija, Father says when he sees me, and breaks into tears. He’s shivering and heaving like if I’d died and came back from the dead. To see Father so overwhelmed is too much for me, and everything I told myself I wouldn’t do when Father got here flies out the window.

  Once Mother and Father had a big fight over something, and Mother was so pissed she threw Father out. He didn’t come back home that night to sleep. Nor the next night, nor the next. He was gone four long days. Finally our cousin Byron told us Father was sleeping in the shop on a striped sectional. When Mother finally let Father come home, Father was changed. He ate his dinner on the TV tray on his orange Naugahyde La-Z-Boy with the TV tuned to the Spanish-speaking news, same as always, his feet soaking in a pink plastic washtub. But he looked different. Tired. Smaller. His face gray, with a lint-covered beard and his hair a mess. He looked acabado, finished. When he was through eating, he made a little room for me on the arm of his chair, hugged me hard, and whispered in my ear, —Who do you love more, your mother or your father? That was the one time I said, —Tú, Papá. You.

  And now looking at Father so broken, so acabado, I want to tell him the same healthy lie.

  Father holds me in his arms and sobs on my shoulder. —I can’t, Father hiccups. —I can’t. Even take care of you. It’s all. My fault. I’m. To blame. For this. Disgrace.

  I had thought Father had come to comfort me. But it’s me who has to hold him up, who has to say, I’m sorry. I love you, Father. Please don’t cry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I can’t say stuff like that. I don’t say a word. My mouth opens and closes and the only thing that comes out is a thin, slippery howl, like raw silk unspooling from my belly. The body speaking the language it spoke before language. More honest and true.

  82.

  The King of Plastic Covers

  Sit beside the breakfast table

  Think about your troubles

  Pour yourself a cup of tea

  And think about the bubbles

  You can take your teardrops

  And drop them in a teacup

  Take them down to the riverside

  And throw them over the side

  To be swept up by a current

  And taken to the ocean

  To be eaten by some fishes

  Who were eaten by some fishes

  And swallowed by a whale

  Who grew so old

  He decomposed

  He died and left his body

  To the bottom of the ocean

  Now everybody knows

  That when a body decomposes

  The basic elements

  Are given back to the ocean

  And the sea does what it oughta

  And soon there’s salty water

  (that’s not too good for drinking)

  ’cause it tastes just like a teardrop

  (so they run it through a filter)

  And it comes out from a faucet

  (and is poured into a teapot)

  Which is just about to bubble

  Now think about your troubles

  —“Think About Your Troubles,” by Harry Nilsson, from The Point!

  Big changes. Tapicería Tres Reyes is prospering under Uncle Baby and Uncle Fat-Face’s direction. Father can’t believe it. Father is invited to come back into the business. After all, he’s family. But on the condition that he leave the managing to Fat-Face.

  Uncle has redesigned the whole operation. He found an old taffy-apple factory on Fullerton Avenue, and now they take in mass volume—restaurants, hotels, funeral parlors. Tapicería Tres Reyes is one of the main sponsors on José Chapa’s morning radio show. Kennilworth, Winnetka, Wilmette have given way to work from Pilsen, Little Village, Humboldt Park, Logan Square, and Lakeview. The Brothers Reyes have their pictures taken with crowns and kingly gowns, and really it would all be great if Father didn’t look so tragic. He wears the face of a King Lear instead of a King Melchor.

  Who knows why, but eventually only Father’s picture is featured in the advertisements. In both the pages of El Informador and La Raza newspapers, as well as on commercials on Channel 26, Father appears wearing an oversized crown beneath the caption—“Inocencio Reyes, El Rey de Plastic Covers.”

  Father’s not happy. He doesn’t want to be known as “The King of Plastic Covers,” but that’s what he is. How can he complain when they’re overwhelmed with customers? But it’s the kind of customer that wants his chrome kitchen chairs reupholstered or his car seats redone in tiger stripes. Father has to hire americanos, and slowly los polacos, los alemanes, even los mexicanos, give way to ’Mericans with their impatient trigger fingers on the staple gun. They’re a younger generation of upholsterers who don’t know how to hold a hammer and have never tasted a tack. In less than an hour they knock out huge curved couches made of crumpled blue velvet and circular swan beds with red satin headboards.

  Father is forced to accept whatever job comes—barstools, booths, waterbeds, truck cabs, even a coffin lining for someone’s pet cat. Uncle Fat-Face and Uncle Baby don’t mind. They’ve always been careless about their craft. But Father’s a perfectionist. This new prosperity makes him ashamed to call himself an upholsterer and confirms his worst suspicions. The public likes junk.

  —But that’s what the customers want! To look as if they live in Pancho Villa’s villa. Oh, my Got! Father says.

  It’s true. The poor want to pretend they’re kings. They don’t like being poor, and if they can fool themselves a little with a bed that looks like the empress Carlota or Elvis slept there, all the better.

  The good thing is Father doesn’t have to pick up a hammer anymore, and he’s a boss now with a whole workshop full of workers, but it makes him grieve to lose the fine antiques he once worked on. He sighs for the lost coins and cuff links, the blue pearls in the loose down cushions of his past.

  There’s more. Father and Mother are about to become grandparents. We came back to find Rafa hadn’t been living with Ito and Tikis after all, but had moved in with his fiancée, Zdenka, a blond
e as pale as a magician’s rabbit. Their baby is due in a few months, and nobody even leaked a word about it to us, can you believe it? My brothers have always been experts at covering up for each other with healthy lies. They’re not like me, determined to bludgeon Father with the truth at any cost.

  Ito and Tikis are another story. They’ve gotten used to living as bachelors and refuse to come back and live under Father’s roof. Father has to accept this. —They’ve become too American, Father says and sighs, —They sleep on the floor with milk crates for furniture. Like hippies! Father blames himself, and says he failed us.

  It’s too much. —Ya no puedo, Father says every evening when he collapses into his Naugahyde La-Z-Boy. —I can’t anymore. And something about saying this makes his body believe it. But nobody takes Father seriously, because for the first time in his life, Father’s making good money. In the words of Uncle Fat-Face, Tres Reyes is making a killing.

  —Father, does that mean you’re dealing drogas now? I joke.

  Father says nothing. Then with a sigh:

  —The ones on drogas are the customers.

  But the biggest change since we’ve moved back to Chicago is how people act around me. Nobody mentions my “abduction.” The more they don’t mention it, the more it’s obvious. Like the square on the kitchen door where that old Mexican calendar once stood. Somebody tore it down before I got back to Texas. But that rectangle, a paler shade than the rest of the door, just shouts, What’s missing here?

  My brothers. I thought they’d say something like if they ever catch Ernesto they’re going to kick his ass. That’s what brothers are supposed to say to save the family honor. “Honor.” That’s the word they’re using nowadays to bring home the boys from Vietnam. But they don’t say a thing, my brothers. I feel like I’m dragging around a clubfoot. Everybody refuses to look at me, and that just makes it worse.

  I don’t know anything, but I do know this. I’m not ashamed of my past. It’s the story of my life I’m sorry about.

  When I got back to San Antonio Viva gave me a good regañada for not knowing anything about birth control. —Shit, if you can’t control your own body, how can you control your own life? What do you want? To self-destruct or something? She made me march over to Planned Parenthood with her, and I learned more about myself in that one visit than a year with Sister Odilia, that’s for sure.

  Viva’s smart. Broke up with Darko after she started college. She finally figured out she didn’t want to marry Darko, she wanted to be him. Isn’t that funny? He’s the one who got her thinking about going to school and helped her figure out financial aid. Everybody who comes into your life affecting the pattern. Darko got her unknotted and moving and all. But you sure don’t have to marry him as a thank-you, right?

  Ernesto got married. Viva said he knocked up some little católica who won’t even let him smoke pot, can you believe it? Mister Holy Roller. Destiny’s like that. Whatever you don’t expect, you just better hunker down and duck.

  It’s just like the story of the volcanoes my Little Grandfather told me when I was a kid. That’s just the way Mexicans love. They’re not happy till they kill you.

  You’re the author of the telenovela of your life all right. Comedy or tragedy? Choose.

  Ernesto. He was my destiny, but not my destination. That’s what I’m thinking.

  —Late. Every first of the month they give us a story, Mother says. —They never pay the rent on time. Do they think we’re made out of money? We’ve got bills too. They’re taking advantage of us, that’s what. Te hablo. I’m talking to you, Inocencio.

  We bought a two-story walkup on Homan near Fullerton. We live on the top floor, and Rafa and Zdenka moved in downstairs. There’s a family of chaparritos from Michoacán renting the basement. Mother thought it would be great to be a landlady. Until she became a landlady.

  Mother has a steak sizzling on one burner, tortillas on another, and on another she’s reheating frijoles for Father’s dinner. —All hours, all hours I’m heating and reheating food. I’m going to retire. Then what, eh?

  She complains, but food is the only language she’s fluent in, the only way she can ask, Who loves you?

  —Mija, please, Father says, snuffing out a cigarette and lighting another. —I suffered a big coraje with Fat-Face this morning over a love seat, and now this. I’m tired.

  —Well, I’m tired too, Mother continues. —I’ve had it with those tenants. I tell you, if you don’t do something, I will! Do you hear me?

  —Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it, Father says.

  And a short time later he comes back, mission accomplished.

  —I fixed it.

  —You’re kidding. Already? How?

  —I lowered the rent.

  —Holy cripes! Are you crazy? I leave things for you to take care of and now look …

  —Listen, Zoila, listen to me! Don’t you remember when ten dollars meant a lot to us? Don’t you? Remember when sometimes we didn’t even have ten dollars, not even that sometimes till the end of the week? That wasn’t so long ago, and I don’t know about you, but never, never will I forget how ashamed I felt having to grovel to that dog Marcelino Ordóñez every first of the month. In English he adds, —Make me sick.

  And he does look sick, his face an odd color, like silly putty.

  Mother says nothing. I don’t know if she’s humbled, angry, or what, but something holy descends into the room and blesses her with the wisdom of silence for a little, just this once.

  —You, to the kitchen, Mother says to me. —Help me with your Father’s dinner. Then, when he is out of hearing range, she adds, —He works hard.

  Mother slices an avocado and chops up some cilantro, and has me squeezing limes for Father’s limeade.

  —You know what your problem is, Mother shouts into the living room. —You can’t leave your work at the shop. Stop thinking about your troubles. You and Lala are always going over the past. It’s over, it’s finished! Don’t think about it anymore. Look at me. You don’t catch me worrying. Are you going to sit at the table, or do you want a tray? Mother shouts, tucking the tortillas into a clean dishcloth.

  No answer.

  —Inocencio, I’m talking to you, Mother continues.

  Again, no answer.

  —Te hablo, te hablo.

  But Father doesn’t answer.

  83.

  A Scene in a Hospital That Resembles a Telenovela When in Actuality It’s the Telenovelas That Resemble This Scene*

  When I was little, there were things I couldn’t think about without getting a headache. One: the infinity of numbers. Two: the infinity of the sky. Three: the infinity of God. Four: the finiteness of Mother and Father.

  I’ve gotten over numbers one to three, but number four, well, no matter if you have a couple of lifetimes to get used to it, I don’t think anybody is ever ready for their mother or father to die, do you? They could be one hundred and fifty years old, and you’d still yell, —Hey, wait a minute!—when their time came. That’s what I think.

  In a way, you’re waiting your whole life. Like a guillotine. You don’t have to look up to know it’s there. Somehow you think you’re going to be courageous when the hour arrives, but I felt as if my bones had been drawn from me. The shock of seeing Father strapped in a hospital bed, anchored by machines and tubes, and Father not being able to talk, his body bubbling over in rage and fear and pain. I couldn’t hold myself up. Like those mummies in the basement of the Field Museum; they pulled their innards out through the nostrils and stuffed them with cloves. That’s how I felt when I watched Father, nurses hustling around him and hustling us out. I couldn’t hold myself up.

  Father’s been moved to Intensive Care. He’s only allowed visitors one at a time, and right now Mother is in there.

  I’m scared.

  I plant myself on a vinyl couch in the waiting area, but the room is full of little kids pretending to do their homework while watching The Newlywed Game, laughing too loudly and spitting
sunflower seed shells at each other. I want to listen to anything but their racket and that stupid TV show. I keep trying to pray, but the words to the Hail Mary get tangled inside my head, like when you crochet and miss a stitch and have to unravel what you just did. It’s been such a long time since I prayed. I wander out to the hall and find a row of plastic stack chairs, and this is where I arrange myself with my eyes shut so I can concentrate on praying.

  —He wants to see you, Mother says, plopping herself in the plastic chair next to me. I must’ve been asleep, because the sound of her voice makes me jump. Then I don’t have an excuse, I have to go in there.

  —Lala.

  Mother calls me back, patting the plastic chair next to her, motioning for me to sit down again.

  —Lala, listen to me. She takes a deep breath. —I know you think your father’s perfect … Don’t roll your eyes, smart aleck. You don’t even know what I’m going to say. Listen. You think he’s perfect, but you don’t know him like I know him.

  —I’ve known him my whole life!

  —What’s your life? You’ve only been on the planet fifteen years! What the hell does a huerca like you know?

  —I know lots of things.

  —Just enough to get you into trouble.

  She means Ernesto. The fact that she’s right only makes me more pissed.

  —Lala, I’m talking to you. I was waiting to tell you this for when you were older, but with your father this sick, he might … Well, I just think it’s time.

  A pain flutters through my chest like a fish darting through a current of cold water, and I hear a voice inside my head say, Pay attention! Listen. Even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts.

  —Your father, Mother says. —Before me and him got married … he already had a kid. Out of wedlock I mean. I didn’t know about this before I married him, and even after, nobody told me nothing. For the longest.

  His family kept it quiet. I didn’t find out till after I had all you kids. Remember that trip we took to Acapulco? That’s when I found out. I don’t know if you remember this or not, but there was a criada who went with us. I can’t think of her name. Her. That girl was your father’s first kid. Your grandma was the big-mouth. She acted like I knew all along, but she was just taking her time, a fat spider waiting in her web. That was her, your grandmother, nothing but a troublemaker. If there was a way for her to tie knots in other people’s lives, believe me, she’d find it.