Slut Lullabies (6 page)

“Also, I've been pondering the port-a-potties. I don't see how, in an entire theater the size of the Uptown, there are no actual restrooms that can be made to function for one night—
but
what about some potpourri, just to dress things up a—”
Beep
.

X, fast: “OK, the sign-up sheet for sex in the Uptown has officially begun, so it's up to you—Chad, I'm talking to you; Miguel would love to see us caught, he's wicked—to make sure the nice Winnetka ladies stay far away from the actual theater section during the reception, since I personally have signed up three times, and I'm not even telling you how many times Dan—”
Beep
.

“Look, your machine keeps cutting me the fuck off—I wanted to say that at the stroke of midnight, you need to make sure the DJ is playing something seventies, 'cause I have a rendezvous in the theater balcony and I want it to be so
Boogie Nights
! All right you little bourgeois marrieds, wake up already—it is only eleven o—”
Beep
.

“Miguel? It's me, Angie. Look, I want to talk to you, OK? You need to meet me in person, I don't want to talk about this over the phone. So, OK, don't call me at home 'cause . . . I'm not so much there right now, uh, so, I don't know, call me on my cell . . .”

OK
, Miguel thinks,
Here is where they all start to fall
.

Mami was looking for Miguel's socks. Why she thought they'd be in Papi's room, he does not recall. She had to take Miguel to the doctor to have his foot put in a cast; at school, worried about Mami, Miguel had claimed his foot hurt so he could be sent home. When he claimed it again, Mami dragged him to the clinic. None of Miguel's friends ever went to the doctor; why did he have to be the one with a crazy mother from Chicago? Over his squirming protests, the doctor pried at him with fingers greasy from other people's sweat, proclaimed the cartilage on the ball of his foot “cracked.” Mami, earnest with doctor-faith that would later become minister-faith, meant to drag Miguel back to have his foot obscured in plaster so the doctor could grow more fat and rich.

The socks were in Papi's room, and so was Papi, passed out. He didn't work anymore, was back from wherever he'd been the past month, still in the shirt worn when he left. Mami tiptoed; Miguel heard the clumsy thud of keys, bottles falling on dirt. He waited, full of hatred for the doctor and Mami, who never saw people for what they were.

“Thieving whore—you think you can trap me by hiding my keys?”

Papi's voice came out English; Miguel did not know what the words meant. Only the tone, one of chasing, Papi's heavy feet pounding dirt with hollow echoes; Mami's, fleeing, too light to be heard. He pursued her to the yard, where the neighbors on both sides were out tending their gardens: watering, weeding, gathering—things his mother, the doctor-believer, did not know how to do. The neighbors turned their lazy eyes to Papi—he was just violent enough to be a bit of novelty, even in their violence-splattered lives. He caught Mami's hair in a fist. Miguel felt his own head jerk. A yo-yo, her face making contact with Papi's curled fingers, knuckles as torn and purple as a woman's hidden parts. Mami's bones made a louder noise than dirt, but her muffled cry was similar, like an echo inside her own chest. Miguel buried his head in his knees, thought,
Let him stop now
,
God, let him stop now, I want to go to the doctor.

Girls screaming. Not Mami, but Miriam and Norma, running from the front yard. Mami on her knees, one knee catching the hem of her dress taut and hunching her over, the fabric too stiff to stretch. He held her hair at the scalp, no movement permitted. Mami had grown skinny from saving flour, butter, and sugar for the children: through her skin, sharp bones. The crunching of knuckle on jaw, knuckle on shoulder blade, knuckle on teeth. Blood on Papi's hand. Was that where the purple came from—dried blood and dirt, never washed from some other beating?

In the past month, had Papi been at some other lady's house, as Miriam sometimes said, collecting blood to stain his jagged fingers?

Or was the discoloration merely an old man's decay, waiting for Miguel someday, too? Now, Miriam in the yard, a whirlwind in bare feet, shaking the fence. The neighbors stared: the girl was too proud, she and her American mother both. “Ayudenla! Ayuden a mi mami, ayudenla!” Who did the child think she was, asking that they get involved? That man was crazy—they had enough troubles of their own.

“Miriam!” Mami's voice, weak but rising like a sharp note, stilling the air. “Go in the house!” The neighbors did not comprehend English, Mami's command an unknown oracle. “Take the niños inside—now!”

Limbs flew. Miriam, soaring through the air with the wild grace of a savage ballerina in grand jeté—landing in a jumble of limbs on her father's back, all gnarled ponytail, bare thighs, and dirty cotton underpants.

Papi reeled. At just thirteen, Miriam was a woman already, breasts and substance; he collapsed to his knees, flung her off by bending over so she flipped like TV kung fu: back against dirt, dress above her hips, collar still in Papi's grip. Mami scampered to her feet, gathered Miguel and Norma tight; she did not seem to know her face was pulpy. The neighbors glanced at one another, worried—would the snotty American lady go away and leave him to beat the girl for show? They did not want to see him beat the little girl.

From the ground, Miriam shouted, phlegm and authority: “Mami—take them,
take them
!”

By the sockets of Miguel's arms, Mami dragged. Around to the front of the house, down the street, farther, farther. Where was Miriam? Norma bawled next to him as they traveled en masse, away, off the block, running for their lives. A three-headed beast with one pair of legs: Mami's. She did not stop pulling until Miguel was uncertain where he was and could no longer turn back. They stood on a corner, Mami's face a fighter's, her nose broken. Next week, she and Miguel would go to the doctor and the doctor would say,
Sorry, nothing we can do for you
, while Miguel's healthy foot twitched in its cast. The week after that, Papi would be dead; they would hear it through the grapevine because by then, Mami and the two of them would be staying with “Tía,” an elderly widow who needed living assistance. Miriam would join them once Papi was dead, and after she had Angelina she would stay with Tía while Mami and the three youngest went to Mami's family in Chicago, to throw themselves on the mercy of Abuela, who'd always known Mami should not go to Venezuela or marry Papi or do any of the things she had done. Miriam would arrive later, a grown woman, and at first Miguel would not remember that for two weeks prior to Papi's death, he had not seen her. When he did, he assumed she'd been
home
still. Only years later would she mention, casually, in passing, how the police picked her off the street, tried to return her home before they made the connection that her father was el loco from the bridge. How they'd had to look for Mami, because Miriam didn't know where the rest of the family had gone.

Angelina sits at the bar. She has a worn look inappropriate to her twenty years so that, though she is only five feet tall and still has acne littering the sides of her chiseled, Guerra jaw, she is able to gain entrance anywhere she chooses without question or fake ID. Of his sisters, Angelina is the least beautiful, with the wisest eyes. She has Miriam's features, but on her they are larger, blunted, her skin too thick to appear feminine, though her hair is long and full, her smile wide. She looks to Miguel, with her ravaged little nut of a face, like a member of a girl gang in a 1980s made-for-TV movie. Tough but sweet. She was eight years old when he left for college; a generation separates them. He has never, that he can recall, had a conversation with her.

She blows smoke from a Marlboro Red into his face. “I just want you to know two things. One, I'm getting divorced. Two, nobody is coming to your wedding 'cause Miriam's gone crazy and they all worship her, but I'll be there. I won't have a date, so maybe you can tell some of your cute flamer friends to take pity and dance with me.”

Miguel says, “Did he hit you?”

Angelina pushes his arm. “Are you on crack? Javier knows better than to be raising a hand to me. He's just, you know, set in his ways. He doesn't want me going to school, which I'm gonna do. He wants to, like, have a gazillion babies hanging off my boobs and shit, but I'm gonna be a nurse. Or a teacher. I don't know. Something.”

“Oh.” He wants to say,
Be something that pays better
.

She is drinking a whiskey or scotch on the rocks. A strange drink for a girl her age, he thinks, but she gulps it with a kind of desperation that transcends age. Under the too-long arms of her shirt cuffs, he sees that her nails are bitten down so low the fingertips are scabbed: picked over, re-scabbed again, mutilated and made sport of, just as he did at her age. He guesses that when she wounds herself, she torments the skin, does not allow a quick healing, is perversely fascinated with damage, or just bored and looking for something to do. He wants to put his arms around her, but he has never known how to do that, not with anybody—which is why he has Chad.

“Uh, are you still working at Dominick's Deli during the day, to, uh, pay for tuition and stuff?” he asks lamely.

Her eyes meet his. Mocking, the eyes of a mother—except his mother never teased, always wore a sheepish expression, embarrassed for her mistakes, for what her children had seen. Angelina lights another cigarette, rubs up and down on his leg like a lover—no, like a sister, except in his family, nobody ever touches anyone, it is too dangerous, love too close to violence. “So,” she says, “can I be your Best Man or what?”

Behind the front door, a dilapidated ticket booth swims with cobwebs—they simply did not have time to tackle any area of the theater where guests would not roam. The entryway ceiling is partially collapsed. Miguel feels his stomach tighten; Chad's grip on his hand simultaneously loosens as he rushes ahead, Miguel reluctantly trailing, eyes on the (admittedly cool) marble floors. “Look,” Chad squeals—is he crazy, is Miguel marrying a crazy person, is this what it has come to? “Look, baby—
look
!”

Miguel does. Two spiraling staircases frame the great lobby; they are aglow, entwined with gauzy silver ribbons and white lights, giant bronze candelabras at the base of each, flames lit. From the upper balcony, columns strain two stories upward like worshippers toward heaven; below are friezes—some painted, some raw—with alcoves on either side. In a daze, Miguel pauses beneath the chandelier in the mezzanine where the ceremony will be, glimpses a fountain overflowing with roses, more candelabras burning bright. He rushes into the second lobby, a giant vaulted room with dark wood beams, stenciled elaborately. He glances up again: winding along the balconies are wrought iron railings embedded with emblems, shields, coats of arms . . . such precision. Each detail, spare ribbons and white Christmas lights and voluptuous flowers, is unchanged from the dozens of times he has been here, on his knees scouring filth, eyes down, always down. He has never been
here
before. Of course this is where Chad wanted to have the ceremony—fought to have the ceremony. This place is all about transformation. Decay is not what Chad loves, but the mythic possibility of regeneration, the promise of something eternal. Beautiful.

“Is it OK?” Chad whispers. Then, tentative-but-hopeful, “Do you
like
it?”

Miguel kisses his ready-to-speak mouth. “I do.”

The basement of the Uptown remains dank and chilled. Elaine and Charles Merry pace the bottom of the staircase leading to the mezzanine, where guests slowly sift to their seats. Elaine has dubbed the decor
makeshift eclectic
: luxurious silver taffeta ribbons on chairs; light-up Teletubbies—all purple—as favors atop each plate. Cocktails are available before the ceremony, for those who need them, and Miguel hasn't seen an empty hand yet. Fags and Blue Bloods size each other up: Who is prettier? Who makes more money? He thinks, a rare moment of Chad-inspired optimism:
Everyone here makes enough to buy their good looks—maybe just for tonight, everyone will be friends.

The music begins. For the warm-up, to create a proper mood of both romance and whimsy, Chad's mousy administrative assistant sings the Indigo Girls' “Power of Two,” accompanied by X on guitar. His strumming hums unexpectedly gentle. Angelina is a black-locked, pornographic Shirley Temple in a curve-hugging dress, hair coiled tight, vampy but comical. She is a fag's wet hag dream, a vixen who does not take herself seriously, whose charm is in her self-creation. In lieu of a bride, she flits around doing her dangly-wrist scotch routine; she hugs miniature grandmothers—in keeping with his fine, long-living lineage, Chad has two. Miguel keeps his eyes on Angelina like a talisman. How has she managed to hide so long in the shadow of their sister, her mother? His chest feels swollen; he is unable to draw a full breath. Chad's hand touches his arms at intervals—here—away—here.

Procession music begins.

“Oh, Christ!” Elaine, departing from her usual Tammy Faye Bakker, honey-tongued sweetness, stomps a low-heeled foot. “I've got to pee—Charles, what'll I do?”

“Go to the toilet, dear.”

And she's off. Scampering up the stairs, skirt gathered at the knee. The men shift weight from one leg to another and back again. Somebody has apparently clued in the pianist to stall. Pacabel's Canon—are they kidding,

who OK'd this? Charles Merry belches quietly into his fist. He has had more martinis than the rest.

“She might have gotten lost,” Chad suggests after five minutes pass. “She's never been here before.”

“How could she get lost—the port-a-potties take up an entire hallway!”

“Yeah, but they're, you know . . .” Chad gestures vaguely, imitating his mother, appropriately confused. “Off hidden to the side.”