Loteria (5 page)
Authors: Mario Alberto Zambrano
S
omos iguales,
mama,” Tencha says to me. “We don’t do anything but follow our hearts.”
But sometimes she’s grumpy, and I wonder if it’s because she’s not following her own. Or if it’s because she’s never been married or because her hair is gray and she doesn’t color it. Whenever I get close to her I notice the whiskers on her chin. But when she looks at me I can see how much she loves me. She calls me her life,
su vida
. She hasn’t found a man to spend her life with and deep down I think she’s lonely, even though she says she doesn’t need anyone to make her happy.
Mom used to say she didn’t get along with Tencha. She couldn’t figure out why and there was no good reason, but they just didn’t see eye to eye. And that’s why Estrella argued with Tencha all the time. She liked acting like she was white and I think it bothered Tencha. She had dark skin like me and Papi, and she reminded Estrella that even though she wasn’t dark she was still Mexican. Estrella would tell me how much she hated her and call her
una pinche gorda
.
Una india,
like those women in the streets selling baskets and bracelets.
Tencha would speak softer to her after that. Because of course it hurt her feelings. How can you call someone fat and not expect them to get hurt? Her eyes would get red and she’d explain to Estrella that she thought her manners were not like those of a young lady. But Estrella wouldn’t listen. Later in our room she’d tell me how funny it was when Tencha got all serious, and that’s when I wanted to hit her.
There’ve been times when Tencha’s called my name and I haven’t felt like going to her. But I go to her anyway, and she’s sitting on the couch with her arms open, like she’s ready to squeeze the life out of me.
“Mira quién es,”
she says. Then I’m covered in her. We sway back and forth, back and forth like on a boat, and she says again,
“Mira quién es, mira quién está conmigo.”
T
he throbbing went through my arms and down my legs and through my veins and back up again into my chest. We had come back from Reynosa a few weeks earlier and Memo had already blown up his hand. I was sitting in front of the television. Papi yanked me away from the couch and dragged me by my hair into the kitchen with his veins coming out from around his nose. You would think Memo wouldn’t have said anything, but maybe he did, maybe it slipped. Maybe Tío Carlos told Papi I’d given Memo a blow job. But I didn’t. I didn’t put anything in my mouth. I touched him and that was it.
Sometimes the bones in my hand beat from the inside like they did that night and I can remember the moment it broke, when Papi told me to bang my hand against the wall, like in
Nosotros los pobres
, after Pedro Infante slaps Chachita across the face. He bangs his hand against the wall until it bleeds, until it breaks, and she screams,
“¡No! ¡No, Papi! ¡No hagas eso!”
“¡Fuerte!”
Papi yelled.
“
¡Dale chingasos!”
He stood over me and everything looked like it was behind water. Mom ran into the kitchen from the hallway, kind of dumb, not knowing what to do or what was going on. Estrella ran to our room looking at me from the doorway before she turned the corner. Mom tried to stop Papi from grabbing my arm but he pushed her away and started saying what I’d done. He screamed that I’d grabbed
su pinche cosa.
He looked at me and yelled,
“¿Y qué hiciste?”
He wanted me to say it. He wanted me to confess. “What did you do?
¿Qué hiciste?
” He called me
putita
. “Is that what you are?
¿Una putita? ¿Eh? Pégale, chingada madre. ¡Ándale!
” He screamed that I jacked him off, my own cousin, my own hand. Seven fucking years old! And I had to learn a lesson.
“¡Pégale! ¡Ándale!”
He grabbed my elbow and banged my hand against the wall. Mom stepped in between us but he slapped her so hard she fell over the counter. We were standing next to the backdoor and the steps that went down to the backyard. I remember the wind coming in making the screen door hit against the frame. Papi pushed me against the wall, and when I stood up he pushed me again toward the door. I fell down the stairs and caught myself on the concrete outside. That’s when I noticed my hand dangling from my wrist like an animal hanging off a branch. I grabbed it with my other hand, trying to hold it up. Mom ran out holding her face, and I could see Estrella peeking from our bedroom window that looked out into the backyard. Papi, grabbing his hair with his fists, didn’t look like himself anymore.
We got in the truck and drove to the hospital next to the highway. But the throbbing didn’t stop and I could hear the beating in my ears. It didn’t stop in the waiting room or when the doctor looked at it, or when they wrapped it and told us to come back the following day so they could fix it. It didn’t stop until later, much later, after I closed my eyes and passed out from whatever they gave me to kill the pain.
W
henever
La Sirena
was called, I’d look at her above the water with her arms down by her side and her long, wavy hair, wishing I was her. Not because she was pretty or grown-up but because wherever she lived nothing and no one could touch her and she could swim wherever she wanted.
I waited until everyone was inside, always at night when they were sitting on the couch watching late-night television at Tencha’s house. She lived a block away from us. I’d wrap two towels around my legs and overlap them to cover my feet, then tie string from my ankles to my knees before rolling into her pool from the shallow end. It was a shitty pool that came with the house she rented, but it was five feet deep and enough to get lost in. The towels would soften around my legs and the extra material that fell over my feet would feel like the fins from a goldfish. I’d wiggle from one side of the pool to the other, humming a song with my eyes wide open, not knowing whether I was crying or not because I was underwater, and I’d dare myself to stay there for as long as I could.
N
one of us knew how to play instruments. I took guitar lessons for a year but quit because my teacher smelled like tomato soup. Estrella liked to sing but when she’d open her mouth Papi said there was no use in trying because she didn’t have a good ear. Mom would sing Rocío Durcal when she was cleaning the house or making dinner, and sometimes Papi would join her, singing the part of Juan Gabriel in “Déjame vivir.” Together they’d sing, moving their shoulders and blowing kisses at each other—
¡Así es que déjame y vete ya!
But if I heard
cumbia
, especially Selena, then I’d start dancing. When we were at wedding receptions everyone on the dance floor would stand back in a circle and cheer me on. At home I’d turn up the volume and make up dances in the middle of the living room with the coffee table pushed against the wall. I’d drag Estrella from the kitchen and ask her to be my partner, but she said she couldn’t because she had two left feet. She was either flipping through magazines or writing notes to her friends.
There was a movie about a girl who wanted to be a dancer and I learned the solo that came at the end. I ran to the front yard wanting to do the gymnastic moves, but then I was too chicken to try them, even on the grass.
When Papi sang in the backyard I’d dance to whatever song he sang. He’d be a little drunk under the light of the porch, and for every four sips he took, I took one. I’d put on one of Mom’s aprons too big for me and grab it with my hands, then throw it back and to the sides like a flamenco dancer, like Lola Flores. I’d mouth the words.
“¡Otra, hombre!”
the way she does and Papi would laugh because I was acting grown-up, pretending to be Lola Flores with my lips pushed together. None of the neighbors cared about the noise. On one side there was an old couple short as midgets and partly deaf, so it didn’t matter. And on the other side there was a younger couple without any kids. I caught the lady who lived there peeking at us from a window one night, but she didn’t say anything. Maybe she liked the music. Maybe she was mouthing the words. We were all Mexican in Magnolia Park.
Papi and I sang and danced until I got dizzy. Then later, in bed, in some dream, I’d be black and white, all grown-up with brown hair and big lips, dancing in the middle of all these men and women watching me, playing their instruments, guitars, accordions, and trumpets, singing,
“¡Olé! ¡Olé!”
And my hands would be on my hips and my chest would be out. My lips pushed together like Lola Flores.
T
hey used to pinch me when I’d say something wrong. Not a bad word, not a
maldición
. Just a word that came before another, one that turned something into either a woman or a man.
La
something or
El
something. As if the moon weren’t Romeo one night and Juliet another.
They’d pinch me if I called something a boy instead of a girl, or the other way around. Why is it
la mano
instead of
el mano
? I can think of Papi’s hands and think they’re masculine, then think of Mom’s and think they’re feminine. If we were talking about the hands of a clock it could go either way. The hands of a clock could be bi.
Once I asked Estrella what a bisexual was and she glared at me like if I’d asked her if she’d ever kissed a boy. “Where did you hear about bisexuals?” she asked. “Where did you?” I asked. “From Angélica, she told me Luis Miguel is bisexual. That he spends time with women in front of cameras but at night in hotel rooms he spends time with
hombres
.” “What!” “Yeah,” she said. “He’s gay!”
“But you just said he’s bisexual.”
Why isn’t a harp female? I’ve only seen the one in
Lotería
. Every time we play on Sundays at Buelita Fe’s house they give me a chance to deal, and so when it comes I throw it down on the table and call it out with confidence,
“¡La Arpa!”
But Estrella laughs at me, and then everyone else does too.
“Why is everyone laughing?”
Papi says to me, as if he’s my guidance counselor, “
El arpa, mija.
Not
La
arpa
.”
“How are you supposed to know?” I ask them.
They say the same thing all the time, that if a word ends in “a” it’s probably a feminine word. And if it ends in anything else it’s masculine. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes a word that ends in “a” is masculine, and other times, it’s feminine. How am I supposed to know what is woman and what is man simply by the arrangement of letters? It’s like at school when they teach you the rules of how to speak, then later teach you how to break those rules. Like you can’t say, “Look what the cat drug in.” You say, “Look what the cat dragged in.” Stupid verbs, stupid rules. But the point you’re trying to make is there, right there in front of you as you stand and stare at it. Pointing.
La luna. El luna
.
The moon!