Into the Beautiful North

  Tía Irma took a long time to replace the glasses in the purse.

  “That,” she finally proclaimed, “is the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  He smiled, hoping she would not strike him with that purse.

  “NAFTA,” he said.

  Irma stormed out of the stall and spied a Guatemalan woman picking through the spoiled fruit.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped.

  “Provisions. For the journey north,” the woman replied. She made the mistake of extending her hand and saying, “I have come so far, but I have so far to go. Alms, señora. Have mercy.”

  “Go back where you came from!” Irma bellowed. “Mexico is for Mexicans.”

  The girlfriends were appalled.

  “Do you think anyone ever showed mercy to me?”

  As the girlfriends followed Aunt Irma, she told them, “These illegals come to Mexico expecting a free ride! Don’t tell me you didn’t have Salvadorans and Hondurans in your school, getting the best education in the world! They take our jobs, too.” She muttered on in her own steamy cloud of indignation. They tuned her out as they marched to the candy seller’s. “What we need is a wall on our southern border.” At least, she continued, the goopy sweet potato and cactus and guava and dulce de leche Mexican candies were made by Mexicans in Mexico and could still be bought by Mexicans in Mexico!

  Irma bought mesh bags full of onions, garlic, potatoes. She bought a kilo of dribbly white goat cheese. She scoffed at the coconut milk sellers with their straws poked into cold coconuts. If she wanted a goddamned coconut, she’d hire Tacho to climb a tree! She purchased some candies and melons and limp bunches of cilantro. To hell with Mazatlán’s tortillas—Tía Irma would buy good, hot, fresh tortillas right in Camarones, patted into being by the trusted hands of her comadre Doña Petra. These damned city slickers used machines to press out tortillas, anyway. Ha! Robot food!

  “Can I drive?” Nayeli asked when they had reached the car.

  “Oh, God,” Tía Irma grumbled, but she gave her the keys.

  I’m lonely, Tía,” Nayeli announced.

  Yolo and Vero were asleep again.

  The She-Bear scoffed.

  “Lonely?” she said. “How can you be lonely with good friends, and… and a good book to read!”

  “That’s Yolo,” Nayeli said. “She’s the reader.” She passed a lopsided Ford truck overloaded with cucumbers.

  “Blinker,” Irma reminded her. Cucumbers fell from the truck like small green bombs, and the Cadillac slid a little on them as she changed lanes. For a moment, the road smelled like a fresh salad.

  “Who will touch my face?” Nayeli asked.

  Three children chased white chickens before a small house with an open door.

  “Who will bring me flowers?”

  “Hmm,” Tía Irma responded.

  “I want to see the lights of a city at night.”

  “Mazatlán,” La Osa patiently lectured, “is a major city, my dear.”

  “I’ve never seen it at night. Only by day. Only to buy groceries.”

  “Oh,” said Irma.

  “Did no one sing you a serenade when you were young?” asked Nayeli.

  “Of course!” Irma replied. “I was gorgeous as hell!”

  “Did no one say dashing things to you on the plazuela on Saturday night?”

  Tía Irma smiled.

  “Well!” she said. “I suppose. El Guero Astengo was quite dapper…. But it was Chavarín, Chava the Magnificent. Well! That was the definition of dashing!”

  She trailed off. Stared out the window. Nayeli thought she heard the impossible: Irma sighed.

  “Who will do that for me?” Nayeli asked. “There are no serenades in Camarones. Who will dance with me?”

  Irma could not answer her.

  Chapter Six

  The election was mere days away. Some of the women, it must be said, had not yet accepted the idea that a woman could be Municipal President. They had been told that they were moody and flighty and illogical and incapable for so long that they believed these things. It took much cajoling and cursing on Irma’s part to shock them out of their ruts. Nayeli was a driving force among the young of the village—all twenty of them. Nine of the youngsters could vote, and all of these girls were voting for Irma. Those ineligible signed as best they could a statement pledging moral support for Irma’s candidacy, and promised to argue the case to their mothers and grandmothers. As for Irma, she had an argument of her own.

  The legendary Garcí a-García, owner of the theater, Aunt Irma’s distant cousin, and the sole rich man of the town, had spent days on the telephone, fighting bad connections and tropical ennui, calling to far Culiacán and Los Mochis, even all the way to Tecuala, searching for a fresh projectionist, his last one having departed to Michigan to pick apples. Apparently, the trade was a dying concern, and he could find no available takers, so Garcí a-García himself was forced to suffer in the sauna-hot booth, tying a rag around his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes and stuffing toilet paper into his ears so the rattling whine of the machines didn’t make him deaf.

  At the age of sixty-five, Garcí a-García was feeling spent. Tired. And he was so worried about money that he had his wife shut off the air-conditioning unit in his cement-block home across the town square from the theater. She was so appalled by this descent into barbarity that she took his Impala and drove herself to Mazatlán to stay with her cousin.

  The Cine Pedro Infante took the place of television for most people in town, so it was Garcí a-García’s endless challenge to maintain a steady flow of double features. He couldn’t afford to let a movie run for a week—in two days’ time, everyone who could pay to see it would have passed through his doors. The movies were an essential lure so he could collect inflated prices for beer, soda, and ham-and-chile tortas at the little stand behind the screen. So what if it turned out the films were of poor quality, whole reels mysteriously spliced out, Chinese subtitles, cat-scratched frames, and underwater sound tracks—a fresh set of titles on the theater marquee meant a lucrative night at the torta stand.

  Garcí a-García had a big white house at the end of Avenida Bernal Díaz del Castillo, and its tall metal door—also painted white—boomed like thunder as Irma pounded on it. La Osa fingered a lock of hair behind Nayeli’s ear. “Posture,” she said. Nayeli stood up straighter. The cinema was visible down the way and across the street, dark and melancholy as a haunted house, its steel shutters down and padlocked.

  One of García’s five housekeepers answered the door.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “I am here to see El Señor,” said Irma.

  “One moment.”

  She slammed the door.

  The door opened.

  “He will see you now.”

  “Gracias.” Irma swept in and tipped her head slightly to the young woman, who then looked Nayeli’s body up and down, judging her and finding her lacking.

  Irma stepped in and Nayeli followed and they were at Garcí a-García’s desk.

  “Ah,” he said, putting his cigarette in an ashtray. “My cousin the champion.”

  “We are tired of this shit,” Irma informed him.

  Nayeli wasn’t sure what was happening; for a moment, she believed Irma was talking about the missing men.

  “What shit is that, Irma?” Garcí a-García asked. His Spanish made even that inane comment sound elegant. “¿A cual mierda te refieres, Irma?”

  “Movies,” she explained.

  “Movies?”

  “Movies!”

  “Ah, movies.”

  He spread his hands and leaned back in his chair. Nayeli noticed he had very important looking papers scattered on his desk. Behind his chair, there was a French poster for the movie Bullitt, Estip McQueen with a face like a monkey.

  “I am here with my campaign manager, Nayeli Cervantes.”

  His eyebrows went up.

  “Campaign manager,” he replied, leaning forwa
rd and offering his hand. “It is an honor to meet you, Nayeli.”

  “Sir.”

  “Am I your uncle?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Hmm. I must add you to my Christmas list in that case.”

  She shook his hand and smiled. She was always smiling. His eyes dropped to her chest—fluttered there as nervously as a moth. His eyes sparkled brightly when he looked back up at her. He tugged her hand a little, and for a brief moment, she thought he’d pull her over the desk.

  Oh no, she thought, eso sí que no: That absolutely won’t happen.

  “Mucho gusto, señor,” she said, getting her hand back.

  “Smiley girl,” he said to Aunt Irma.

  “She is a karateka,” La Osa replied. “Nayeli could karate-kick you to death where you sit.”

  “That’s hardly feminine.” He sniffed.

  “Perhaps,” Nayeli suggested, “it is time for a new kind of femininity.”

  La Osa beamed: that’s my girl!

  “After the election,” Irma warned, “I will expect certain employment opportunities for the women of this town.”

  “Employment!” He snickered. He laughed out loud. They didn’t. “I already hire women,” Garcí a-García offered lamely.

  “Women sell sandwiches and popcorn,” Irma said. “Women take tickets and mop out your toilets. But that’s not where the real money is.”

  “Well,” Garcí a-García explained, “the real money goes to management, to the projectionist—”

  Irma nodded, smiling benevolently.

  “No, wait,” Garcí a-García said.

  “You wait,” she replied.

  “You must be kidding.”

  “You must be kidding.”

  “Get out!” he cried.

  “You get out!”

  “This is my house!”

  “This is my city!”

  Nayeli was thrilled: politics in action!

  Irma said, “It could be good for you when I’m in power.”

  Garcí a-García took a meditative puff of his cigarette.

  “What does this—this—problem have to do with me?”

  “We demand, at the very least, a good job as projectionist.”

  “I am the projectionist!” he said.

  “Train a woman!”

  He stared at her.

  Aunt Irma leaned over the desk and said, “Don’t be an idiot.”

  “Excuse me?” he cried.

  “Someday I will be President,” Irma said. “It would be wise for you to get with our program and attend to the needs of the women who now rule this municipality.”

  She audaciously grabbed his pack of cigarettes and shook one out for herself and then posed, waiting for him to light it.

  Es la Bette Davis, Nayeli thought, having seen this very scene on Irma’s television.

  Garcí a-García lit the cigarette.

  Irma said, “Do you want to make money or not? Do you wish to benefit from good relations with City Hall?”

  The Great Man stared over their heads, calculating. He smoked and thought. He slowly nodded.

  It was all over in short order. Irma had already spoken to Nayeli’s mother, and she was ready to be trained for the job of Projectionist of the Pedro Infante. Nayeli watched, amazed, as the two negotiators shook hands.

  “One last thing,” Irma said. “As a favor to me.”

  “Name it, Champion.”

  “I would like to see the cinema reborn with a film festival of my favorite Mexican superstar.”

  “Oh, no,” Garcí a-García said, raising his hands as if to deflect a blow.

  “This is nonnegotiable. I need the inspiration in these trying times of seeing Mexico’s greatest film star, Yul Brynner!”

  “I have told you one hundred times that Yul Brynner is not a Mexican!” García-García cried.

  “Are you crazy?” Irma snapped. “I was the bowling champion! I bowled in Mexicali! I bowled in Puerto Vallarta—and I saw his house! Right there in the jungle! On a hill! ¡Es Mexicano, Yul Brynner!”

  “No, no, no —”

  “Besides,” Irma announced, “I saw Taras Bulba, and Yul Brynner spoke perfect Spanish.”

  Garcí a-García shook his head.

  “It was dubbed.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Irma said. “Come, Nayeli!” she snapped.

  Garcí a-García stared at Nayeli.

  “She’s impossible,” he said.

  “I am counting on you,” Irma called.

  Nayeli waved her fingers at him and walked out.

  Election Day dawned brightly—no clouds in the sky at all. Everyone voted, even Garcí a-Garcí a—he shoved his ballot marked in favor of Ernesto James, the old mayor, into the box with manly force, then strode out, lit cigar in his mouth, showing his determination before mounting his bike to wobble home. Election monitors from Escuinapa manned the booths in the Secu Carlos Hubbard school assembly hall. Tacho cooked free ham tortas for all voters, and Nayeli busied herself running sodas to all the eaters. Tacho, no fool, put extra chipotle salsa on the ham and charged elevated prices for the cold drinks. The Fallen Hand made a killing.

  It was a parade: María, the projectionist-in-training, accepted a round of applause when she swept into the polling place; Sensei Grey wore his fedora; Aunt Irma voted for herself; Tacho took a quick break from his grill to vote, then spelled Nayeli so she could do her civic duty. Yoloxochitl and La Vampira slouched in, acting bored. Tacho kept his eye on two outside agitators, El Guasas and El Pato, who lurked behind the whitewashed trees in the square. The ubiquitous narco LTD oozed past, followed by a black Cherokee with darkened windows.

  It was all over by ten o’clock. The ballots were counted in La Mano Caída. As predicted, Aunt Irma won by a landslide.

  Outgoing mayor Ernesto James noted darkly to Garcí a-García that it was women who counted the ballots, but there were not enough men to force a recount. Despairing, he looked at the female rabble gathered in the square and threw up his hands.

  Aunt Irma took the podium in the plaza and announced, “What did I tell you!”

  Firecrackers. Bottle rockets. Free burro rides for the children. A ninety-eight-year-old soldier from the last battle of the Revolution broke out a bugle and skronked like a dying elephant. Tacho turned up his stereo really loud and played records by El Tri and Café Tacuba.

  Irma, the conquering heroine of Tres Camarones, threw her arm around Nayeli’s shoulders. She said, “A new age dawns.”

  Chapter Seven

  Night.

  Mami was asleep—Nayeli could hear her soft, whistling snores coming from her room.

  Poor Vampi, Nayeli thought. She was an orphan—her parents had died in one of those events Nayeli thought of as somehow especially Mexican. They had gone south instead of north, seeking work in Jalisco. Their bus driver had fallen asleep, and the bus had plunged off a cliff, killing all the passengers. The driver had survived.

  Vampi’s grandmother had raised her. No mother or father in Tres Camarones would have allowed her to get away with her goth outfits, but a tired grandmother could not hope to contain her.

  Nayeli wandered through her mother’s small house in the dark. The sideboard that held her father’s picture was always lit with a few votive candles standing on saucers, Doña María’s small altar to Don Pepe.

  Nayeli used the hem of her blouse to dust the standing picture frame. Her father looked so handsome in his police uniform, erect and grim—he believed no real man ever smiled in photographs, especially not in uniform. After all, aside from the mayor, Don Pepe was the sole representative of the Revolutionary Government of the Republic. A man’s man, but also a leader among men.

  He used to take her down to the Baluarte River to shoot his .38. She smiled. He’d set up soda bottles, and she’d shoot six rounds at a time and miss the bottles with every shot. He never said he wished he’d had a son, though she could tell he thought it often. He’d park his police car beside the soccer field, an
d when she scored a goal, he’d set off the siren, sorely frightening the mothers in the stands.

  But he could not make enough money to take care of them. He earned the equivalent of twenty American dollars a week. And he had to buy his own pistol and bullets.

  On the day he left, there was wailing and breast-beating. He held Nayeli for a moment—she could smell his aftershave and his shaving cream and his deodorant and his breath mints. And he…

  The bus…

  The empty street…

  She shook her head.

  Don Pepe had been philosophical. He had always offered her nuggets of wisdom that he would have given his son if he had only been so blessed. And the short girl he called La Chaparra was a good kid and had listened intently to his insights. So when he told Nayeli, “The more I learn, the less I know,” she pondered it. He was a big reader, and he informed her once that all water that ever existed remained in its original form. “You drink the same water that Jesus Christ washed his feet in,” Don Pepe lectured. “Cleopatra once took a bath in your ice cube.”

  His favorite saying, because it was concise, was: “Everything passes.” He had written this gnomic prophecy on his postcard from KANKAKEE, ILLINOIS, with its luridly colored picture of a mentally ill wild turkey and cornfield. “Mi Dear Chaparra—things go well here. Good boys at work. I will send funds soon. I have much luck. But… Everything Passes. Your Father, Pepe.”

  Don Pepe was a Mexican man: a fatalist. He meant to impart much more than comfort. He meant that all good things would also end. All joy would crumble. And death would visit each and every one of them. He meant that regimes and ancient orders and cultures would all collapse. The world as we know it becomes a new world overnight.

  The announcements were already going out: the Cine Pedro Infante was back in the film festival business. María Cervantes had taken her projectionist exams at the hand of Garcí a-García and had passed. He had put in his orders for the first films, and though it felt corrupt, he had caved in to Aunt Irma’s City Hall pressure and brought in Yul Brynner movies. Of course, Garcí a-García was Mexico’s number one Steve McQueen fan. Indeed, he would have shown Baby, the Rain Must Fall every week if he could have. Still, was not politics the art of compromise? To be sure, Irma was now mayor and crossing her an extremely unwise strategy. And yet, Garcí a-García had some things going for himself, too. He was a cineaste. He knew of Orson Welles and Bela Lugosi and Zeppo Marx, and he knew there were ways to insert Estip McQueen in a Yul Brynner film fest. There was one movie—just one—that featured both of them. “¡Ese cuate sí es todo un hombre!” he announced to his housekeepers as he studied the McQueen poster on his wall. Yes, they agreed, that dude was 100 percent MAN.