“Yes,” said the other aunt, “and, Lupe, you’ve done so much to make it pretty—different from all the other units that look exactly the same from the outside, and, we suppose, inside.”
“Thank you,” my mother said, her eyes steady on me. I had not moved. Perspiration was turning cold on my body.
“What do the neighbors think about your American husband?” one asked my mother, but her smile was aimed, knifing, at me.
“I suppose—no es así?—that he’s the only … americano … in the projects.”
“We wonder how he feels about that?” the other one fired, and drew her smile away from my mother and on to me in judgment.
I wanted to rebut, to answer her hateful questions with something cruel. For once, I wished that my father would appear, that he would shout them away for judging him when he had already been judged so harshly by circumstances.
Sweating even more from the rage I felt, my breathing harsh, I was finally able to say to them: “You’ve always been jealous of my mother because you’re so damned ugly and she’s beautiful.” Not enough yet, not enough. “Y no se aperescan aquí jamás. Don’t ever come back again!” Not yet enough. “Cabronas!” I hurled the harshest word I could think of in Spanish, a word blunt beyond its actual meaning—something like bastards, damned bitches, but much, much more.
“Guadalupe!” one screamed over at my mother. She dabbed at tears, which were not flowing.
“Did you hear what your son called us?” the other asked. They were both sobbing extravagantly now.
“He called you cabronas,” my mother said softly, “and that’s what you are. Know this: We Rechys carry our pride with us wherever we live.” She turned her head and looked at me. “Don’t we, m’ijo?” she said.
When at the checkout desk of the college library, I asked for a play by García Lorca, whom Dr. Sonnichsen had mentioned, the librarian, Baxter Polk, introduced himself to me, offering to order whatever was not then available. He was a tall, slender man with mesmerizing eyes.
One afternoon, he told me that he wanted to show me a collection of foreign plays he had just acquired for the library, some books that might interest me. We stepped down laddered steps to the bowels of the building.
From a sparsely filled shelf, he pulled out a book and held it out to me. I took it. I saw a photograph of two excessively handsome men, both blond, about to kiss each other, their hands touching. Twins. No, not twins, or even two men. The photograph was of one man facing a mirror, as if about to kiss himself.
I looked away from the photograph. Mr. Polk’s eyes were so intent on me that I pulled back.
“He’s very beautiful, isn’t he, John?” he asked me. His gaze held, unblinking.
I had never before heard a man referred to as “beautiful.” “He’s handsome, yes,” I said. “But I don’t see—” I wasn’t sure what I had been about to say.
“His name is Jean Marais,” Mr. Polk said. “I thought you would be interested.”
“I’ve never heard of him, and I’m not interested in him,” I said. I thrust the book back at him, thrust away the image of the blond man.
Mr. Polk took the book and held it close to himself, as if to warm his heart with it. “Oh, I didn’t mean that, oh, no, no, not that at all, I meant you might be interested in the play, the writer of it,” he said with a sly look at me, his gaze probing. “It’s Cocteau’s Orphée. Marais is the star of the film. I’ve noticed the books you’ve been checking out—”
“Mostly Lorca,” I said.
“—and I thought you might want to broaden your … literary … horizons.”
“I’d like to read the play,” I said.
Mr. Polk held the book out to me again, like a precious gift not to be rejected; but instead of surrendering it to me, he put his hand on my shoulder. I pretended to reach out for another book on a nearby shelf so I could move away.
“I must introduce you to a girl you must meet,” Mr. Polk said.
I met Barbara in Mr. Polk’s office a few days later, a very pretty girl, about my age, perhaps slightly older, eighteen.
“Barbara, this is Johnny, Johnny, this is Barbara.” Mr. Polk bowed individually before each of us.
I assumed that his referring to me as “Johnny” was meant to indicate fondness, although, increasingly, I disliked the boyish name.
“Hello, Johnny,” Barbara said.
She said the name so immediately fondly that I didn’t mind it from her. Mr. Polk stood back, as if reeling from the spectacle of both of us. “My God!” He touched his cheek in posed amazement. “You two aren’t only enamored of the same writer—”
“Lorca?” Barbara asked me.
With an especially intricate configuration of gestures that seemed to be outlining our forms and bringing them together, Mr. Polk finished his propped exclamation, “You even look alike.”
I recognized the girl then. She had aroused talk around the campus by having resigned from one of the college’s most popular sororities, whose members were attractive and well-off girls.
Barbara and I now met often on campus, by conscious coincidence. We would go to the student union building at a certain time between classes. We would sit at one of the many plastic tables, a checkerboard of shiny colors, and drink coffee and talk exuberantly about Lorca. We agreed that we would translate Lorca’s Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) from its original Spanish into English, finding all other translations—we had each read one—“inadequate.”
To seal the agreement, we shook hands, and then I elaborately kissed one of her hands, feeling immediately silly—but welcoming the memory of the transient who had long ago kissed my mother’s hand.
“Wait now,” Barbara said. “Do you know Spanish?”
“My mother is Mexican,” I said.
As we began our translation in the college library before I would go off to my job at the newspaper, I soon noticed this about her: One moment she was exuberant, joyful; and then without warning, a look of sadness shaded her face. Her words trailing off, she seemed to withdraw into a private place of her own. When that happened, I would simply wait for the excited pretty girl to come back, as she always did within moments of the fleeting mood.
At times, when I was with her, the memory of Isabel Franklin would return. Why? There was no point of reconciliation between her and Barbara that I could find. In disappearing from El Paso, why had Isabel Franklin not diminished in importance in my life?
Because of my scholarship, I was eventually appointed by the journalism faculty to the staff of the college magazine, which was called, appropriately, El Burro, The Donkey. It was a paying job—twenty-five dollars a month. That and my job as copyboy augmented the money I contributed at home.
The editor of the college publication was a young man whose face was a field of pimples and who seemed always to be laughing hysterically at some new joke or cartoon he was clipping out to borrow from another college publication. Borrowed jokes filled the several pages of the glossy magazine. “Listen to this one! It’s the best,” he praised each joke.
Besides me and him, there were five others on the staff: a girl who seemed to have a permanent cold and, as far as I could see, did nothing; a “writer,” a sullen young man who wrote funny captions; a photographer, who took photographs only of sports events and fraternity and sorority parties; and two “reporters,” both males, who wrote flat captions to accompany the photographs.
At the end of the semester, the clowning editor left the college. I was appointed by the faculty board—Mr. Polk was a member—as editor. That position would pay more, thirty dollars a month. Despite my job at the newspaper—and the ongoing translation of Lorca with Barbara—I accepted this new job gladly. I was determined to convert the magazine into something much better when I published my first edition, the previous editor having completed an issue yet to appear featuring “Best Jokes and Cartoons from El Burro.”
My announced position as editor immediately gave me a certain prominence on t
he campus. It must have contributed to my becoming friends with two very popular young men at the college.
I was working out on the parallel bars in the gym, thinking I was alone because it was early in the morning, when I noticed another young man entering. He worked out briefly with a couple of dumbbells. When I was leaving, he introduced himself.
“Scott.”
“I’m John.”
He was blond, with a gymnast’s body, and he was good-looking. We left the gym to go to the student union building “for coffee.” Nervously, not knowing why, I hoped Barbara wouldn’t be there. Scott introduced me to his best friend, who was waiting there for him. “Ross, this is John. John—Ross.”
Ross was a school wrestler, compactly built, a fact he emphasized by twisting his head as if to unwind from some intense activity, rubbing his muscles as if to obviate any new soreness. When he walked, he kept his arms a few inches from his torso, to emphasize his wide lats. Both he and Scott were in what was considered the “best” fraternity on the campus—and the most exclusive.
As the three of us were sitting in the student union building, Barbara walked in. She saw me and I saw her. Pretending—I was sure of this—that she had just remembered something, she walked out.
“What were you doing with those guys?” she asked me bluntly as we sat in the library during our next meeting to discuss whether we would emphasize life or death in our definitive translation of Blood Wedding—and pondering what to do with the “moon” imagery.
“They’re my friends,” I said, ready to be defensive but realizing how unlikely the friendship might seem.
“Have they asked you to join their fraternity?”
We had never discussed her dropping out of her sorority; the cause was still a subject of speculation. The suspected reasons I had heard ranged from her being crazy to her being pregnant. I saw no evidence of either.
“No,” I said, “they haven’t.” It was a ridiculous thought; I could certainly not afford what participating in a fraternity, especially that fraternity, would entail; joining didn’t interest me at all.
“I wonder why they might want you,” Barbara asked.
“What the hell does that mean?” I stood up.
“That you’re too smart for that kind of bullshit,” she said. I couldn’t think of anything to rebut; I was searching for something that had to do with her having been in a sorority, but I could find nothing because she had, notoriously, left it.
“Do they know you’re Mexican?” she asked.
Struggling to contain my anger at her, I sat down again and returned my attention to Lorca and the moon imagery.
Since they had seen me and Barbara in the student union building, Scott and Ross suggested we all go out together on a date on Saturday.
“No doubt about it, man, she’s beautiful, a little strange,” Scott said about Barbara.
“Yes,” I agreed, “she’s beautiful, and very smart.”
“Smart don’t matter,” Ross laughed. “Dumb and pretty, that’s my choice.”
With trepidation I asked Barbara to go out with me and my two new friends and their girlfriends, certain she would say no; that way I could back out of the plan. She surprised me by saying yes. I felt trapped into going.
My new friends agreed to pick me up in Scott’s father’s car, a roomy Lincoln. I gave them my sister Blanca’s address as my own. I took the bus there earlier. My sister was surprised by my unexpected visit, but she welcomed it. I told her some friends were picking me up there because they lived nearby; did she mind? I know she suspected nothing else—unlike my sister Olga, who would have immediately been on to what I was doing. I sat on the flowery-vined front porch and waited.
Scott and Ross had already picked up their girlfriends; just as I had expected, both of the girls were cheery and giggly and pretty. Whether they were smart or not, the vapid conversation would not reveal. We drove to pick up Barbara. I was in a good mood at the prospect of extending my relationship with her in this way; we would be allies, even saboteurs of the girls’ inanity, almost predetermined.
Barbara’s mother was watering the lawn of a two-story, recently painted house. She was a drawn, thin, woman, unsmiling when she saw me get out of the car. I thought of Virginia Taylor’s mother, and my aborted date with her daughter; I considered pulling back.
“Is Barbara home, ma’am?”—of course she would be; I just wanted to acknowledge the presence of the harsh woman, and for her to acknowledge mine.
Not possible! The water spouting from her hose was nearing where I was standing. There was no way that she would be directing the water at me. A spray wet my shoes. I dodged back uncertainly, not wanting her to think I suspected she might be attempting to wet me. But she was—there was no question of her intent as the water came closer. I pulled back far beyond the water’s reach. The arcing water swirled before me.
I shouted into the house, “Barbara! I’m here!”
The woman jerked the water hose away, turning her back on me. Barbara ran out. She did not look at her mother. Wordlessly, she got into the car. Scott and his girlfriend were in front; Barbara, Ross and his girlfriend, and I attempted to squeeze into the back, Ross emphasizing his impressive size by turning sideways, front again, sideways—“I’m just too big,” he kept saying—until his girlfriend volunteered to sit in front.
After I had introduced Barbara—“Hello,” “Hi,” “How’reya, Barbara?”—Ross’s girlfriend said to Barbara, “Aren’t you—?”
“Yes,” Barbara said, smiling, very pleasantly “I am.”
“Oh.”
I wanted to laugh. Whatever the girl had been about to ask her, Barbara had defused the question, obviating any unpleasant possibility.
But not entirely. Scott’s girl seemed to clarify: “We’re Chi Omega.” she said—that was the other highly desirable sorority on campus.
“Oh.” Barbara said.
It was a relief to be in the movie theater, where we didn’t have to say anything; we saw a musical with Betty Grable and John Payne. Later, at a popular coffee shop, the two sorority girls talked between themselves about nothing. I tried to make conversation with Barbara—I don’t even remember about what. She was withdrawing from all of us, so that I wondered, Why the hell did she agree to come? Ross and Scott were talking about weightlifting—“How much do you press now?”—and suggesting that I take it up soon with them.
The disastrous evening ended when we drove Barbara home. I got out with her. Her mother stood like a guard at the door. Barbara and I said good night. I considered kissing her, but she had already walked into the house, past her mother, as silently as she had left.
Had she agreed to go out with all of us only to get away from her mother?—and to persuade me to split away from Ross and Scott and their cheerful banalities?
When I returned to the car, Ross and Scott were kissing their girlfriends hotly. I considered walking back to my sister’s house where they had picked me up.
12
Barbara and I continued our translation of Lorca’s play. But the initial closeness, if it had not been severed, had not progressed. That had to do, I was sure, with my growing friendship with Scott and Ross, both of whom I had come to like, and enjoy being with, even if our conversations were never as lively as I might have wanted. They continued to talk about their fraternity, hinting that I would make a good “brother.” Impossible, and even if possible, unwanted. But I was flattered by the implied association with the good-looking group of men on campus, since the matter would proceed no further than that.
They invited me to go with them to visit Ross’s “widowed aunt” at her ranch, in Balmorhea, in Texas, for a weekend. Surprising myself, I agreed. I would be away only two days. When I voiced my constant apprehension at leaving my mother alone to face my father’s moods, my brother Robert assured me he would take care of her.
I needed to get away.
When I told Barbara that I was going on that brief trip, to explain a break in our
translation of Blood Wedding—which was proceeding well, to the point where we fantasized that she would play the woman and I would play the lover in what we determined would be our own production—she went silent and ended our collaboration for that day.
They picked me up again at my sister Blanca’s house, the address I continued to give them.
In Ross’s slick new car, a Buick, the three of us seated in front, we drove across miles of Texas desert and abrupt greenery—it burst out of the earth, a shock of immediate contrast with long arid stretches of dusty-yellow desert, distant mountains. In the deep blue sky of Texas, the bluest cumulus clouds melded and burst, now and then snuffing out the sunlight so that a gray glow veiled the landscape. When the sun escaped, the grayness would turn into a silvery brightness that lit the desert.
Ross’s aunt wasn’t home when we arrived at the vast ranch, acres of land about a sprawling house like a luxurious hacienda, with terra-cotta walls, a large courtyard, and a cultivated cactus garden, the cactus in bloom, large blossoms exploding with color out of tall needled green trunks. The widowed aunt had left word with a maid, a Mexican maid, that she would be back tomorrow and we should make ourselves at home.
It was late, almost midnight. The maid led us to a large guest room. Although she might have been waiting to show us another room, Ross and Scott, sighing wearily from the heat and the drive, put down their overnight bags. I followed their lead with my own.
The room was furnished in the style of the house, expensive wooden furniture, “Texas decor.” There was one large four-poster bed, the posts carved elaborately.
“Too fucking hot! Let’s go swimming!” Ross suggested.
“This late?” I didn’t know how to swim and I preferred that they would not know.
“Yeah,” Scott agreed. “Balmorhea has the largest outdoor swimming pool in the country,” he explained to me, apparently having been here before.
The sky was a spangled field of stars, so many that the darkness seemed crowded—a Texas summer sky, stilled by rainless heat.