About My Life and the Kept Woman

  The pool was surrounded by a tall wired fence; the gateways were chained and locked, closed for the night.

  Scott climbed and then jumped over the fence. Ross followed. I made my way over easily.

  Scott and Ross started stripping off their clothes, T-shirts first, then shoes, socks, pants, shorts. Naked, they plunged into the water that mirrored the sky’s dark brilliance.

  “Come on!”

  “Come on, John!”

  They spattered about the pool, then swam a length, competing, their bodies bobbing up and down, bare flesh illuminated in streaks by the hot moonlight.

  “Come on, John!”

  “Come on in!”

  I wasn’t sure what was making me more anxious, the fact that I couldn’t swim or the fact that I was being coaxed to take off my clothes and join their nudity.

  Ross swam to the edge of the pool, where I was standing. “Take off your clothes, come on, jump in!”

  Scott flapped his hands in the water and spattered my shoes. I pulled farther back.

  “I’m embarrassed—” I started.

  “Embarrassed? With us guys?” shouted Scott, his body shimmering toward the edge of the pool.

  “—embarrassed that I don’t know how to swim.” It was easier to admit that.

  “No shit? We’ll teach you.”

  “Come on!”

  At the edge of the pool, still in the water, they flanked me, reaching out for my feet, threatening to pull me in.

  “Take your clothes off or we’ll yank you in with ’em,” Ross laughed, grabbing one of my legs.

  Scott slapped forcefully at the water so that it sprayed on my clothes. “You want to get your clothes wet?” He had reached the very edge of the pool and was grasping for my other leg.

  Wresting myself away, I took off my shirt, my shoes, my sox, my pants. I kept my shorts on.

  Their bodies pushed out of the water, emerging out of the pool, water dripping in sprinkles off their bare flesh. They bounded toward me; puddles of water spattered on the pavement.

  “Take your shorts off, man!”

  “Or we’ll pull ’em off for ya.”

  I took off my shorts, drawing away from the wet bodies romping toward me to pull me into the water. I backed away, farther, away from the pool.

  They approached me there, movements exaggerated in preparation of grabbing me. I did not move.

  Ross started laughing, doubling over, and then Scott laughed. Ross splashed water on me. I was laughing, too.

  They shook off the water, drying themselves with their hands, letting the dark heat dry their naked bodies.

  Dressed now, scurrying out of the fenced enclosure, we drove back to the ranch, laughing, laughing, laughing.

  In the bedroom we would sleep in, the heat was stifling. The day had turned into one of those Texas nights drenched in moisture, as if the night itself was sweating. Despite the open windows, the air refused to yield even a breeze. Air-conditioning was not yet ubiquitous; some houses, even those of rich people like Ross’s aunt, had it only in individual rooms, not the whole house. Even then, only refrigerated air worked to cool; conventional air-conditioning only added moisture.

  It was past two o’clock. In the hot darkness streaked with distant flashes of sudden lightning that illuminated the tall cactus just outside, long shadows were thrust on the ground and quickly gone. Ross and Scott stripped to their shorts, sighing loudly to emphasize the relief of less heat. This time unself-consciously, I did the same, welcoming momentary respite from the encroaching heat.

  “I’m not sleeping in the middle, I’m too big!” Ross said, and flung himself at the very edge of the large bed. He asserted his requirement extra space by sprawling on the bed, pushing one leg diagonally across the mattress.

  “I’m bigger than you.” Scott began to struggle with him to pull him off the bed.

  “The fuck you are.” Ross resisted.

  Scott grabbed Ross’s legs; I grabbed his shoulders. Ross pushed away, powerfully. Pulling and tumbling, we all fell back onto the floor, sweat soaking through our shorts, outlining our groins, gluing limbs to limbs in shifting positions, two bodies on top, one on the bottom, two on the bottom, one on top, rolling sideways, sliding against hot moist flesh, hands grabbing, pushing away, bodies intertwined in sweaty friction, as we gasped breathless with increasing heat—our bodies’, the room’s, the overwhelming night’s—laughing, falling back on the floor, exhausted.

  The next day, Saturday, we drove around the small hick town of Balmorhea. Most of the men, the Anglo men—ranchers, I assumed—wore cowboys hats, expensive boots. Women in light print dresses that seemed new but from another time darted into and out of a Newberry store, the only somewhat large store in the flat landscape. Mexican laborers idled in small clusters seeking the shade of scattesed trees under the punishing sun, their wives or girlfriends fanning themselves nearby, children with them dashing about, indifferent to the heat, moist heat increased by a the brief shower that had followed the rumbling of thunder last night.

  The single theater in the dusty town proclaimed that it was “Air-Conditioned by Refrigeration.” That may have accounted for the number of people buying tickets. An old musical I had seen in El Paso with my sister Olga was playing: Coney Island, with Betty Grable and Victor Mature—probably just reaching the town, which seemed to be isolated in the middle of the desert. Going into the theater was a cooling way to pass the couple of hours before Ross’s aunt was due back at the ranch.

  We bought our tickets—fifty cents—from a dopey man, cowboy hat sliding over his face, who woke up only when anyone rapped on the glass window he sat behind. When Ross took his ticket, the man chuckled something to him. Scott and I approached together for our tickets. The old man said, with a raspy chuckle: “Now you city boys be sure to sit on the left side, ya heah? Right side’s for spics, Saturday afternoon’s spic day.” He snickered, or coughed, a combination of both that made a dirty sound.

  Jolted, I asked the man, “What did you say?” while Scott and Ross waited for me at the entrance to the theater.

  “Saturday’s spic day,” the man said, as if he were being asked to embellish an appreciated joke. “They get to sit on the right side, just one day a week, mind ya—they come in from the fields then.”

  “Come on,” Ross goaded me.

  Scott had already walked in.

  I stood at the entrance. The movie house, square, without a trace of decor, looking as if it might double as a hall for town meetings or religious revivals, was lit in dirty orange light. The hall was divided by an aisle in the center, flanked by rows of seats. There was a scattering of people on the left side, all white. The right side was almost filled, with men, women, children talking expectantly in Spanish, waiting for the movie to begin, candy wrappers, popcorn bags rattling as they brought out prepared food.

  I felt the gasps of refrigerated air on my body, cold on sudden cold.

  Either Ross or Scott called to me, “Come on!”

  I waited. Which side? I looked at the Anglo people. A few had children; they held them close as if to prevent them from bucking over to the other side.

  I still waited. Which side?

  A little girl, about seven, broke away from her mother on the Anglo side and ran into the aisle, where a Mexican boy was playing idly on the floor next to his seated parents. The white girl looked at the brown boy her age as if studying something foreign. Rushing into the aisle, her mother yanked her away.

  On the left side, Ross and Scott, already seated, devouring popcorn, looked back at me, motioning impatiently.

  Several of the Mexicans on the right side stared at me, curious now as to why I was standing there, calling attention to myself.

  I took a step in, moving toward the right side. I waited, now the object of stares from both sides of the aisle. I took another step, another, faster, to the right of the hall, where the Mexican kid had been yanked in by his own parents.

  “Hey!” the old man who had so
ld us the tickets stood glowering at me. “What the hell ya think you’re doin’, boy? I told ya—”

  I joined Ross and Scott on the left side, only to avoid a scene that would involve my friends, just that. To have done otherwise would have created turmoil in the hall. The old man who had shouted had been prepared for that. I sat through the Technicolor movie only intermittently aware of it, surprised, and relieved, when it ended.

  When we filed out, the Mexicans waited dutifully for the Americans to leave, and then they followed. The little Mexican boy who had sat in the aisle before the movie sprinted ahead of everyone. “Hello,” he said to us.

  All three of us answered back, “Hello, kid,” “Hi,” “Howreya?” Scott patted the little boy on the shoulder, a gesture that clearly pleased his father, a dark-brown man, who said, “Thank you, sir.” The few white people who had been in the theater turned back, waited, stared at us.

  At the end of the block where Ross had parked, I noticed only now a greasy diner and the sign on its window:

  “We do not serve niggers, spics or dogs.”

  Ross’s aunt was back at the ranch.

  She was a woman of about fifty, a widow left with a ranch and lots of money. A stolid woman, friendly, with a wide welcoming smile, “Miz Crawford” greeted us with ample open arms. “My, my, my! Jest look at ya now, will ya?—better-lookin’ all the time!” she greeted Scott familiarly, planting two loud kisses on his lips while she captured his face with her hands to enssure that he would receive the two full manifestations of her affection. She spoke with a deep Texas accent that seemed to have been deliberately deepened throughout her years. Her effusive words came easily—in puffs, I thought, as in cartoons.

  Before Ross, she leaned slightly back as if the spectacle of her nephew required distance to be grasped entirely. “Why, Ross, I swear ya get bigger an’ bigger by the day. Come here and let me feel your muscles, boy.” She didn’t give him a chance to come to her. Before he could flex—he started to eagerly—she was consuming him with enormous hugs and kisses.

  She turned to me. “Hiyah, there, handsome!—where’d y’all get him?”—the latter to Ross and Scott. “Glad to have ya with us, hon,” she said to me, and hugged me tightly.

  “Glad to be here, Miz Crawford.”

  Already, she was offering us lush red fruit. “You’d think I picked it myself,” she chuckled. “Well, I did, from the outdoor market!” When she laughed, her body shook, continuing to shake after her laughter had abated. She would be the kind of woman who could not do enough for you, who would follow you out the door lavishing candy, cookies—whatever was available.

  “Lemonade? Cookies? Maybe something a little … tastier?” she winked. “How about some frosty beers?” Then: “My, my, my, how good it is to have y’all here.”

  Despite her excessiveness, I liked her. I complimented her on her dress. “Ready to give it away,” she said, but it was obviously new.

  “You gonna be a fraternity boy, I hear,” she said to me, patting Ross conspiratorially on the shoulder, spreading the conspiracy with a smile at Scott, and then smiling her widest at me.

  “Yeah, we intend to rush him for our fraternity,” Ross said proudly to her but addressing me.

  Scott put his arm around my shoulders.

  “Well, I think y’all will be making a dammed good choice,” Miz Crawford winked at me, their confederate in announcing the news.

  I smiled, curiously relieved that the futile invitation had been finally spoken—“Oh, wow, thanks”—and then I was instantly anxious. Since they had told her before we arrived, they must have been sure that I would accept their invitation—did anyone turn them down? How much further—no, closer—could I let this proceed before I stopped it, or before it was stopped, now that I had allowed another impossible step.

  “Hope you boys are hungry, ’cause I’ve had Esperanza whip us up a big scrumptious meal, yum; just for y’all. She’s the best damn cook this side of the border.”

  Miz Crawford ushered us into the dining room: a large, grand room that extended the appearance of a Texas hacienda. It had solid wooden chairs, a long dining table, colorful sweeping draperies on the floor-length windows that opened, like the windows in the bedroom, onto the cactus garden, where the bright moon was creating a configuration of elaborate shadows on the ground.

  The table was carefully set, all correct, all belying the woman’s folksy presentation. Perhaps the abundant suggestions of elegance had belonged to her husband.

  The maid—a slim Mexican woman of about forty—served us quietly.

  “Mesquite soup,” Miz Crawford announced.

  The Mexican woman smiled in appreciation—“Yes, miz”—and lingered as if for our approbation.

  I picked up my soup spoon, at the same time that Scott and Ross did.

  “Whoa!” Miz Crawford halted us, in her same friendly voice. “Not yet, boys.”

  She was going to say a blessing, I was sure.

  “Now you run on along and tend to your business till I call you, girl,” Miz Crawford instructed the woman. She lowered her voice as the woman hurried out, “She’s new, ya know, helps Esperanza when we have guests. Esperanza’s daughter went and got herself pregnant—again!” she explained in her regular tone now, still merrily: “I can’t eat—I have to confess it, it’s the God’s truth, Lord forgive me—I jest cain’t eat when one of them is new to me and around me before I get to know them. … Now you boys eat up the mesquite soup!”

  “When who’s around?” I lowered my spoon over the chilled soup. The subsequent cling! sounded harsh, like a bell.

  “Why, Messican field workers, honey,” Miz Crawford answered. “I can abide Esperanza—just love her like family, ya know, she’s been with me for a coon’s age. But this girl—forget her name—she’s been here only a week. I think she was a picker before she came here.” She sampled the soup and proclaimed it delicious with a smack of her lips. “I love their food, but I can’t eat when they’re in the room with me, and that’s the Lord’s truth,” she seemed to want to emphasize for me. “Now y’all go ahead and eat up, eat up.”

  “Then I shouldn’t be here.” I said that quietly and wished I had said it much louder.

  Ross and Scott looked at me, just looked.

  “Ya think I’m an old bigot, don’t you, handsome? Well, I’m not,” Miz Crawford addressed me. “I treat my girls, all of ’em, real good, give ’em clothes, furniture. It’s jest that ya gotta assert some standards of de-corum, and if—”

  I stood up. “If you can’t eat when Mexicans are in the room with you, ma’am, then I don’t want to be here to ruin your dinner.”

  Ross and Scott had stopped eating. Miz Crawford seemed unflapped. In the same, unbudgingly friendly voice that she had been speaking in, she said, “What ya mean by that, handsome?”

  “That my mother is Mexican, Miz Crawford.” I didn’t look at Ross or Scott—I didn’t want to—I looked only at the woman.

  Not even then did the smile relax, as if she could not comprehend anything that could possibly indict her, wrest her away from her cheerfulness. No, wait, the face allowed a slight frown, a tilt of the lips downward, briefly, and then it smiled and smiled and smiled.

  “Well, now, that’s OK by me. Ain’t it, boys?” she asked without addressing them. “Just sit down and enjoy your meal, handsome. Let’s forget all this nonsense. Eat up!”

  Now I did look at Scott and Ross. I couldn’t read their expressions, because they were staring down at their plates. In that room, I felt alone, isolated, separated, saddened.

  I walked out of the room into the garden. The cactus, in sultry bloom, gleamed silvery under the incandescent moon. There seemed to be more stars than I had seen last night, probably because the ranch was away from even the small city’s intrusive lights and the brief shower last night had wiped the sky clean.

  I would forever remember that sky, yes, because of that night, and because of its beauty, yes, and its clarity. I would always remem
ber, too, the pursuing image of the kept woman of Augusto de Leon that wafted into my mind:

  She inhaled impercetibly—no sound even of her breath, the barest rise and fall of her breasts, the only indication. A slender streak of smoke arose, lingered about her before it evaporated.

  Why now that irrelevant memory that aroused in me a feeling—already fleeting—of peace?

  13

  After a while, Scott came out looking for me. He put his arm around me. Then he coaxed me back in. I followed him, but not into the dining room. I went into the bedroom and lay in bed. Later, Scott and Ross came in silently, as if not to wake me—or not to talk about what had happened. Scott slept in the bed and Ross slept on the floor—I heard him whisper to Scott: “I’m too big to sleep on the bed with you-all.” I slept only sporadically, eager for the night to end.

  It finally did.

  In the morning, we prepared to leave. Miz Crawford had fixed—or had her cook fix—box lunches of sandwiches and fruit and pie, everything she could think of. She hugged and kissed Scott and Ross. She approached me, smiling. She held out her arms to me. I resisted pulling back because the smile on her face seemed to me now—in retrospect—to be the only truly friendly one she had awarded me since dinner, friendly and, I thought, or wanted to think, a touch regretful.

  “Now, handsome, I mean it, you come back and visit any time, and you’ll be welcomed with open arms.” She opened her arms, and I allowed her hug without returning it.

  * * *

  On the way home and over the music from the radio—I chose to sit in back—we talked in friendly tones. Nothing was mentioned about my walking out, or the reason for it. Ross kept the radio on, even when the music faded and there were only the clamoring voices of evangelicals that populated the deepest parts of Texas, jabbering on about sin and evil and Jee-zuss-Christ. We laughed uproariously at their rantings.

  We arrived in El Paso late at night, Scott now at the wheel while Ross dozed between us. They dropped me off at my sister Blanca’s house.