Caramelo (51 page)

At the big Salvation Army on South Flores Street, between a bin of bunched brassieres and saggy slips with the elastic gone
guango
, Mother has me guarding a lazy Susan table while she sizes up a box full of china, turning dishes upside down to see if there are any stamped “France” or “England.” Mother’s an expert at sorting out the jewels from the junk. I’m thinking what story we can tell Father about a Duncan Phyfe chair I’ve got my eye on when a voice startles me: —
Pura plática
. You’re nothing but a
mitotera
. You act like you’re better than us, but look at you, Miss Full-of-Shit. Shopping at
la segunda
.

It’s her. Cookie Cantú wearing a smock apron with a Salvation Army name tag. I walk away like she doesn’t mean a thing to me.

Cripes! Why the hell did we have to come to
this
Salvation Army?
This
one. Of all the stinky, half-ass hellholes, we have to pick the very one where Cookie Cantú works. Like if it’s not bad enough we’ve got to skulk around, now everybody has to know we buy used stuff.

Like I care? It’s just I don’t want to go around announcing it to everybody so that everyone looks at me like I’ve got
piojos
or something. Like if life isn’t hard enough already being new and not even coming from Texas and shit. Damn! I want to go home right then and there, but Mother yells at me, loud and in front of everybody, because I’ve forgotten about the lazy Susan.

On the walk home, I get to carry the lazy Susan while Mother complains about my bad attitude. I can’t bring myself to tell her what’s wrong. I know she’ll just laugh at me like she always does. Shit, I can imagine Cookie Cantú mouthing off how she saw me buying secondhand stuff. Maybe she’ll feel sorry for me. That’s all I need is somebody like her looking at me with pity.

Just when I can go to sleep again without thinking about Cookie Cantú, Cookie Cantú pops up in my life again to terrorize me. It happens
on my way home from school. Under the freeway, they’re waiting for me, on both sides of the sidewalk and some even down in the cement drain ditch. Circling like
zopilotes
, the ugly vultures we’d see on our trips down to Mexico.

Cookie Cantú and her friends. They start throwing words and end up throwing rocks at me.

—What you looking at,
bolilla
? Think you’re so smart because you talk like a white girl.
Huerca babosa
. You think you’re better than us, right?
Pinche
princess, you’re nothing but
basura
. See who’ll come and help you now.

Somebody hits me upside my head with her purse, and the blow leaves my ear ringing. I can feel the heat rise on the side of my face, but before I can even raise my hand, somebody else kicks me in the kidneys, and then they all just descend, all claws and black feathers. I try to shove them off my hair, and twist out of their grip, and when I realize how useless that is, I just take off running, first back toward the school, then along the access road north, thinking I can cross over on the next overpass. But before I even get there, I can see some girls waiting there for me too. At least I think they’re waiting for me. It’s too risky to find out.

There’s no choice but to scramble over the chain-link fence and make a run for it through the interstate. It’s not rush hour yet, but the traffic is already heavy in both directions. I can feel the whoosh of wind as the trucks roar past me. When the traffic lets up, I run. A pickup honks and changes lanes to avoid me, I don’t care, I don’t care.
Que me lleven de corbata
. Take me, dangle me from the bumper. I don’t care, I never belonged here. I don’t know where I belong anymore. And the sting from the beating like nothing compared to how much I hurt inside.

I run across the interstate like my hair’s on fire, my scarf loose and one shoelace undone. I don’t know how, but I make it to the middle strip where the guardrails divide the traffic headed downtown from the cars aimed toward the border. My heart a rabbit, the air in my lungs burning. To climb over the guardrail I have to steady myself with a post to get any footing. Just when I straddle the top, a big semi whooshes past
tooting
its horn.

—Asshole! I scream at the top of my lungs, but out here, with all the cars rushing about, the word flutters away like paper. I
plunk
myself down on the guardrail, and then I just bust up like a little kid, puking up
tears, my chest heaving and heaving them up. All about me the highway roars wildly, little bits of gravel striking me now and then.

I’m too scared to run across the three lanes of traffic headed south and too scared to stay put. I don’t know what to do, the fear freezing me.

—Celaya. Something says my name in a hard whisper. —Celaya. The voice is so sharp and clear and close to my ear, it hisses and sizzles and makes me jump. Celaya.

Then I just take off on automatic, running and running, leaping off the guardrail and sprinting across the three lanes so fast, I don’t stop till I’m over by the grassy hill beyond the exit ramp. I fumble over the chain-link fence and heave up some burning phlegm. My body cold and hot all at the same time, my lungs hurting when I breathe.

Celaya. Somebody or something said my name. Not “Lala,” not “La.” My real name.
Who the hell was that
, I think to myself.
Who was that?

When I cross over to the residential streets, my legs are trembling.
Una viejita
busy watering her porch plants looks up at me from her yard, a fat little bug-eyed dog wearing a Big Bird T-shirt
yap-yapping
at me from her side of the fence.

—Shame on you, Maggie, Maggie’s owner scolds. But Maggie just keeps barking till I’m out of sight.

I drag myself home shivering and sweating, words and feelings thrashing inside my chest like big black bats trapped inside my bones.

When I get home, I lock myself in the bathroom, undress, and assess the damage, examining all the parts of myself that are bruised, or skinned, or throbbing.

Celaya. I’m still myself. Still Celaya. Still alive. Sentenced to my life for however long God feels like laughing.

73.

Saint Anthony

      F
ather’s hands are numb from working on a set of lounge chairs for the Saint Anthony Hotel. Leather is rough on the hands. His hands calloused from tugging the twine hard and taut. After six days, he comes home and can’t untie his own shoes, his hands swell as fat as a mattress of needles. It’s a good job, one he can’t afford to pass up. We need the money, and landing the hotel account is something Father is proud of.

But now his hands are as big as Popeye’s. He’s so tired he eats his dinner on a TV tray in the living room. —Please, a bucket of hot water for my feet and another one for my hands. Mother brings him two plastic buckets, one for each foot, and two dish tubs for his hands. Then Father just lies there splayed in his La-Z-Boy. Mother feeds him
albóndigas
, Mexican meatballs, with fresh flour
tortillas
, because that’s what Father loves best. She feeds him herself, as if she is feeding a baby.

—Your father works hard, she says.

74.

Everything a Niña Could Want

            —¿
S
ola?
But why would you ever want to be alone? You have everything a
niña
could want here. Why would you leave all this?

Father waves a butter knife in the air, pointing around the kitchen. The window fan is stirring up the impossibly hot air from outside and pushing it inside. The kitchen table is full of bread crumbs and greasy with butter. Father is finishing his breakfast toast and a three-minute egg.

I rinse another glass under the faucet and wash another dish without turning around to look at the splendors Father is pointing out to me. A refrigerator sticky with handprints nagging to be washed, a loaf of bread perched on top alongside the radio with the aluminum foil antenna and some cooking pots fuzzy with dust. Cheap kitchen cabinets with the varnish wearing thin. A creaky wooden floor bald in places, crying out for stripping and revarnishing. A set of kitchen chairs Mother found at the Salvation Army, don’t tell Father, with the seats all redone in what my brothers get a kick out of calling “Nalga-hide.” And the yard-sale kitchen table. Everything Father points to means work for me. Already the house feels too small, like Alice after she ate the “Eat Me” cookie.

—It’s just that I want to be on my own someday.

—But that’s not for girls like you. Good girls don’t leave their father’s house until they marry, and not before. Why would you ever want to live by yourself? Or is it … you want to
do
something that you can’t do here?

—I just thought maybe I would want to try stuff. Like teach people how to read, or rescue animals, or study Egyptian history at a university.
I don’t know. Just stuff like … like you see people doing in the movies. I want a life like …

—Girls who are not Mexican?

—Like other human beings. It’s that I’d like to try to live alone someday.

—¿Sola?
How? Why? Why would a young lady want to be alone? No,
mija
, you are too naive to know what you are asking for.

—But all my friends say …

—Oh, so your friends are more important than your father? You love them more than me? Always remember, Lala, the family comes first—
la familia
. Your friends aren’t going to be there when you’re in trouble. Your friends don’t think of you first. Only your family is going to love you when you’re in trouble,
mija
. Who are you going to call? The man across the street? No, no.
La familia
, Lala. Remember. The Devil knows …

—More from experience than from being the Devil. I know, I know.

—If you leave your father’s house without a husband you are worse than a dog. You aren’t my daughter. You aren’t a Reyes. You hurt me just talking like this. If you leave alone you leave like, and forgive me for saying this but it’s true,
como una prostituta
. Is that what you want the world to think?
Como una perra
, like a dog.
Una perdida
. How will you live without your father and brothers to protect you? One must strive to be honorable. You don’t know what you’re asking for. You’re just like your mother. The same. Headstrong. Stubborn. No, Lala, don’t you ever mention this again.

When I breathe, my heart hurts.
Prostituta. Puta. Perra. Perdida. Papá
.

75.

The Rapture

      Y
ou’re supposed to love your mother. You’re supposed to think good thoughts, hold holy her memory, call out to her when you’re in danger, bid her come bless you. But I never think of Mother without dodging to get out of her way, the whoosh of her hand quicker than the enemy’s machete, the pinch of her thumb and index finger meaner than a carnival
guacamaya
.

It’s Toto’s fault. On the first warm day of the season, when the sky is blue again and the wind so mild we can shut the space heaters off and open the windows, he comes home pleased with himself for finally coming up with something original. —Guess what! I’ve enlisted.

Can you beat that? Mother’s Toto has turned conservative on us. They take him in June, the week after he graduates from Resurrection. And Mother’s been a terror ever since. Forget about running to Mexico, Toto won’t hear it. Toto says he’s cut out for the military. —I’ve never met anyone as pigheaded as you, Mother screams, disgusted, not realizing where he gets it from. What can you say to Toto after all and everything? He’s eighteen. He’s made up his mind already. He doesn’t want to be a mama’s boy forever.

I don’t blame him. Viva’s right, sometimes you’ve got to help your destiny along. Even if it calls for drastic measures. Father says the army will do Toto good, make a man out of him and all that shit. But what’s available to make a woman a woman?

If I could, I’d join up with something, too. Except I don’t know who would have me. I’m too young to belong to anything except the 4-H Club, and forget about that.

Look, I don’t mean to spook anybody, and you can believe whatever
you want to believe, but I swear this is true. Every time I so much as step in the Grandmother’s bedroom off the kitchen, the smell of fried meat just about knocks me out. Mother says I’m imagining it, and the boys say I’m just telling stories.

That’s why I go back to sleeping on the living room couch, and how it is Toto nabs the room as his. Lolo warns me it’s his after Toto moves out this summer, and I tell him no problem, he can have it.

I don’t care. I don’t care about anything anymore. I don’t go to the thrift stores with Viva or Mother, and I don’t hang around downtown after school. Viva makes me sick. And Mother. Mother’s never been on my side about anything.

I can’t explain it except to say they don’t even know who the hell I am. This is what hurts me the most. Viva too wrapped up in Zorro, and Mother too wrapped up in Toto. I don’t mean to come off sounding like Eeyore, but it’s the truth. Father would like to think me and Mother are friends, but what kind of friend can’t hear you when you’re talking to her? I’m tired, that’s all.

I blame Mother with her crazy projects. Mother who insists we fix the back apartment and get it rented, but who’s going to fix it? Father’s in his shop, the boys busy with their after-school jobs. That leaves me and Mother battling dust and decay. The house, like a big bully taking our puny blows, watching and laughing at us.

I can’t live like this is all I’m saying.

When I don’t expect it. When I’m alone. When I don’t want it to. The Grandmother comes and gets me. When I shut my eyes. A furious heat behind the sockets, deep inside my head, from somewhere I can’t even pinpoint. Like light, or a dance, or a tattoo needle, because there’s no name for what I’m naming. And it’s like a doorbell or a fire alarm without a sound. It comes, and if I will it not to, it rolls in even stronger like a wave.