Caramelo (52 page)

I know when I open my eyes, she’ll be there. As real as when she was alive, or, if you can imagine this, even more alive now that she’s dead. Her. The Grandmother. With her stink of meat frying.

The first time I realized it was that day I ran across the interstate, and since then the Awful Grandmother just keeps appearing. She drops cleanser in the tub from behind the plastic shower curtain when I’m peeing. She clears her throat and coughs when I swear. Her
chanclitas flip-flop
behind me from room to room. Leave me the hell alone!

Mother says that when her mother was alive, she used to tell a story about the day all the pots in the kitchen sang. Every pot and pan, glass and dish crashed and banged and rattled one morning. This was when all the kids were at school and her husband at work, and she was home alone in bed with the baby. What was she to think? A thief in the house? And if so, what could she do? After what seemed like forever the crashing stopped as sudden as it had started. When she was brave enough to get out of bed, she and the baby finally peeked into the kitchen, expecting to find a mess. But look—everything was in its place. The glasses and cups on their shelf, every skillet and pot hanging still from its nail. She looked about—nothing. She checked the doors and windows—locked. Then she remembered the recent death of her brother. Is that you, Serapio? Do you want me to pray for you? Because over there they believe if somebody dies but hasn’t settled his business on Earth, their spirit hangs around tied to the world of the living, rattling dishes or leaving a door open just to tell you they’ve been there.

That’s why I think the Awful Grandmother, who couldn’t let go of everyone else’s life when she was living, can’t let go of this life now that she’s dead. But what does she have to do with me?

—Vieja metiche
, I hear myself muttering like my mother. —
¡Vieja metiche!
I shout good and loud sometimes. I don’t care who hears me.

It was bad enough when she was alive. But now that she’s dead, the Awful Grandmother is everywhere. She watches me pee, touch myself, scratch my butt, spit, say her name in vain, watched me with my scarf come loose and one shoe untied running across Interstate 35. My clothes fluttering in the wind. And I should’ve kept running. I should’ve let a fender take me.
¡Te llevo de corbata!
Take me already!

At meals, I space out, staring at the Mexican calendar that’s been hanging on the kitchen door since 1965. A
charro
carrying off his true love, a woman as limp as if she’s sleeping, a sky-blue
rebozo
draped around her shoulders, the
charro
wearing a beautiful woolen red
sarape
, the horse golden, the light glowing from behind his
sombrero
as if he’s a holy man. If you look close, you can see the silver trim on his trousers, hear the creak of the tooled-leather saddle. The night sky cold and clear. Behind them a dark town they’re running away from, maybe. The moment before a kiss or just after, his face hovering above hers.
El rapto
. The Rapture. And for a moment, I’m carried out of here on the back of that horse, in the arms of that
charro
.
Until somebody yells, —Pass me the
tortillas
—and snaps me back to reality.

To wake up sad and go to sleep sad. Sleep a place they can’t find you. A place you can go to be alone. What? Why would you want to be alone? Asleep and dreaming or daydreaming. It’s a way of being with yourself, of privacy in a house that doesn’t want you to be private, a world where no one wants to be alone and no one could understand
why
you would
want
to be alone. What are you doing? That’s enough sleep. Get out of there. Get up now. People drag you like a drowned body dragged water-sodden from a river. Force you to talk when you don’t feel like it. Poke under the bed with a broom till they scuttle you out of there.

—What’s wrong with you? Mother asks.

—I’m depressed.

—Depressed? You’re nuts! Look at me, I had seven kids, and I’m not depressed. What the hell have you got to be depressed about?

—Since when do you care? I say to Mother. —All you ever worry about is your boys.

And for the first time I think Mother is about to slap me. But instead she starts yelling. —You spoiled brat, selfish, smart-mouthy, smart-alecky, smart-ass, I’ll teach you. There are tears in her eyes that she won’t let out of her eyes. She can’t. She doesn’t know how to cry.

It’s me who winds up crying and running out, the screen door banging like a gun behind me.

—Come back here, crybaby, Mother shouts good and loud. —Where you going? I said come back here,
huerca
. I’m talking to you! When I catch you I’m going to give you two good conks on your head with my
chancla
. You hear me! Do you hear! Then you’ll know what depressed means.

76.

Parece Mentira

      I
f I had to pick the last person on the planet I’d ever fall in love with, Ernie Calderón, it would be you. The goofiest. Honest to God. Completely out of it. Look at you. You dress like you’re still in the sixth grade. Striped polo shirts and white jeans—and not even bells! Sneakers instead of boots. Hair as short as if you’re in the military. Not a trace of a beard or mustache, not even a little bit of sideburns. And where did you get those funky black glasses? At least get wire-frames. To top it off, you’re too short for me. You look ridiculous. How did I ever wind up with somebody like you?

Father likes you, though. He would. You’re the type fathers like. Safe. That’s what you are. The kind who goes to confession every Saturday and to mass every Sunday.
—Un
good boy. That’s what Father says when Toto brings you home from school one day and announces, —This is Ernie. Because you look like what you are, Ernie. A good Catholic Mexican Texican boy.

Somebody comes up with the idea of starting a band, and then there’s no avoiding you. You and Toto screeching away on electric guitars, Lolo with his god-awful trumpet, and Memo banging on paint cans pretending he’s a drummer. Bits and pieces of Santana, Chicago, Grand Funk Railroad, because you haven’t learned to play a whole song yet. Thank God Mother makes you practice out in the garage apartment, but even if you were over at Father’s shop on Nogalitos Street, I bet we could still hear your sad, slow-motion version of “25 or 6 to 4.”

That’s how it is you start coming around. First for the jam sessions, and then because of the after-school business my brothers and you start, doing yard work, mowing lawns, hauling and cleaning trash.

Ernie.

Honest to God, at first I don’t even notice you. Who would notice you? And then the next thing you know, you’re very beautiful. Or very ugly.

Depending. But isn’t it always like that with love?

Before love. And during. During changes you. I don’t know how it is after. I’ve never really been in love with anyone before except for Lou Rocco in the fourth grade and Paul McCartney, but they don’t count. That wasn’t love, was it?

Ernie.

It’s the time of the meteorite showers. You drive over in your funky white truck, the one you and the boys use for the lawn-mowing business, a big clunky pickup full of dents and rust and dirt. I’ve never seen a falling star.

—What, never?

—Never.

—Not even in Mexico?

—Nope.

—So come with us.

Because it’s you, and my brother Toto, and me, Father lets me go, can you believe it? But Toto wants to meet friends downtown and play foosball first. And then it winds up we drop him off and promise to come back for him later. That’s how it is we drive up north to the Hill Country, you and me, Ernie.

Ernie.

You’re nothing but a big baby. A big
chillón
. Worse than a girl. Any little thing and your feelings get hurt. How I know is this.

On the night of the falling stars, we don’t see any stars. Not a goddamn one. It’s too cloudy. We sit outside in the bed of the pickup, and you ask, —Want to hear a song I wrote? And before I can answer, you leap out, haul out your guitar from the cab of the truck, and start playing.

Not bad. Until you open your big mouth and start singing. Way off-key. I mean way off.
Perdido estoy. Yo siento el Destino llevándome a tu amor, tu amor, tu amor
.

At first I think you’re kidding, and I start to laugh. Until you put your guitar back in its case, snap it shut, and won’t look me in the eye. A terrible silence. The sound of the wind, the sharp scent of cedar. In the darkness, your eyes glinting.

What a girl you are, but I don’t say this. How can I? You aren’t at all like my brothers, are you? You’re not like anybody I’ve met. Except for me. Swear to God. Swear to God, Ernie, and I think to myself, I promise I’ll never make you cry again. And I won’t let anyone else make you cry either. This is what I’m thinking.

—So what’s your real name? I ask.

—What?

—What do they call you?

—Ernie.

—No, I mean, haven’t you got a nickname or something? What do they call you at home?

—Ernie, you say again, and this time you give a little tee-hee like a comic-strip cartoon.

Ernie! I let go a sigh. It lacks dignity, respect, mystery, poetry, all the ingredients necessary to fall in love. Only how can I tell you that?

—I’ll call you Ernesto.

And that’s what I call you. Since the night of the falling stars when we didn’t see any falling stars. Ernesto, then and since.

77.

On the Verge of Laughable

      J
ust like that picture on the Mexican calendar,
El rapto
, Ernesto arrives in my life to rescue me. His white pickup waiting at the school curb every day at three, saving me from Cookie Cantú and her
desesperadas
. I’ve always been a daydreamer, but all I need is for Ernesto to look at me and remind me I’m not a ball of light, a dust mote spiraling in a sunbeam.

He’s a porcelain salt shaker, my Ernesto.
Muy delicado
is how they would describe him in Spanish,
muy fino
, as if he was a cigar. With a face and hands that sweat a lot, and a slight hunch to his thin shoulders as if his body is saying, —Don’t hit me.

Up until Ernesto, Father gave any boy who came near me that eye of the rooster he’s famous for, a sideways once-over as if he’d suddenly had a seizure and can’t look at you face-to-face. But with Ernesto, well, I guess he’s just satisfied he’s Mexican.

I believe in la Divina Providencia. The Calderón family is from Monterrey, Mexico, and they travel back and forth from Texas to Nuevo León all the time. When Ernesto saw me put sour cream on my enchiladas and didn’t say, —Yech—like the other kids from San Antonio, I just knew. I don’t have to explain everything, about the different foods we eat depending on the different regions our families come from—the desert north of Mexico with their flour
tortillas
, the Yucatán south with their fried bananas and black beans. The pink-skinned beans and the black-skinned beans, the pink-skinned Mexicans and the black-skinned Mexicans, and all the Mexican shades in between. Ernesto doesn’t have to ask me if I’m Mexican. He knows.

Okay already. Just the sight of me and Ernesto together makes people
laugh. Because he’s so Catholic, my brothers call him “the altar boy” behind his back, and me “Lala, the lady wrestler” to my face, but it only makes me want to protect Ernesto even more from the cruelty of the world. Me, I’m used to it, but
pobre
Ernesto with his heart like a soft-boiled egg, he hasn’t a clue.

To tell the truth, Ernesto Calderón is corny. Not quite funny, but funny himself. On the verge of laughable. Know what I mean? His jokes always a little off.

—So the teacher asks Juanito to use the words “liver” and “cheese” in a single sentence.

And Juanito says, “Liver alone, cheese mine.”

Lo más triste
is Ernesto at parties. He does card tricks and bad impersonations—an Irish brogue, an Italian tourist, a Hindu holy man. Pathetic. And the saddest thing is he thinks he’s pretty good. Poor thing.

He has a sexy voice, Ernesto does. A velvety velour to it, like the Prince Popo paintings painted on black velvet you find at the flea markets. As regal as a drum. But the worst laugh on Earth, I’m not kidding. Goofy as a hyena. The kind that makes people in a restaurant look up from their plates and ask, —My God, what’s that?

And when he laughs he throws his head back like a cartoon hippopotamus, tonsils showing and the bottom of his molars exposed. I can see all his dental work, but what surprises me is that he has extra teeth alongside his molars, a whole extra set like a monster or something, only it’s not a detail you can point out. —Hey, you’ve got extra teeth, huh? Especially with his being so sensitive, so I don’t say anything.

Ernesto takes me to see
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
, but believe it or not, when we get to the theater we find it’s paired with a funky Elvis-in-concert movie. Of course, it’s the Elvis film that’s first and lasts forever. Neither Ernesto nor me can stand Elvis, but what are we going to do? We got here early. I tell him about how my cousin is named after Elvis and how my grandmother had a fit every time she heard his name, because of what Elvis said about Mexicans.

—No lie?

—Swear to God. Ask my brothers if you don’t believe me.

Somebody in the back blows their nose like a bugle playing reveille. Christ Almighty! I look over my shoulder, and way off in the last row I see an old lady dabbing her face with a handkerchief.

Then Ernesto does something that makes me forget everybody else
in the theater. He makes a little circle on my hand with one finger, a spiral round and round with spit. I have to shut my eyes, it makes the skin tingle, all the hair on my body stands up. Until a
viejita
down the row from us starts hacking a throatful of phlegm, a nasty business that’s a real mood breaker.