Caramelo (10 page)

—You know I usually keep out of the affairs of my daughters-in-law, but are you aware Zoila is calling your child a liar?

—Válgame Dios
. It never fails—a hair in the soup!

—My life, I told you this was going to happen. First you loan your brother money, and now look. This is how he pays you back.

—That’s it. I’ve had it. Licha, start packing. Tomorrow we leave for Toluca. It’s settled.

All of a sudden the Grandmother’s children are planning to leave. Uncle Baby and family to Veracruz. Uncle Fat-Face and Aunty Licha to her relatives in Toluca. But tonight there is a great slamming of doors and crying as the children are led whimpering off to bed and the guests accompanied to the courtyard gates.

—Thank you. Happinesses. Good night, good night, some of the guests say, while others say only “good, good,” too tired to say the “night” part.

The girl Oralia unlocks the gates and yawns. The gates on their squeaky hinges yawn too. Señor Coochi leaves without even looking at me. Then the gates shut with a terrible
clang
like in prison movies.

M
aybe he forgot. Maybe he has to get my princess room ready. Maybe he meant tomorrow. The next night after our hot milk with a little drizzle of coffee, I go down to the courtyard, wedge the tips of my black patent leather shoes onto the bottom lip of the gate, pull myself up to the open square where the mailman drops the letters, and into this frame squeeze my face. The hiss of car wheels on wet streets after it rains, and the car lights coming toward our house that make me think maybe it’s him, but each time it’s not.

—Lalaaaa!!! Are you coming up, or do I have to come down and get you?

—Coming!

B
ut he doesn’t come for me.

Not the next night. Nor the next. Nor the next next next.

14.

Fotonovelas

      N
ow that the others are rid of, the Awful Grandmother can unlock the walnut-wood armoire and indulge her favorite son. She brings out of hiding what she has been saving since his last visit. Lopsided stacks of
fotonovelas
^*
and comic books.
El libro secreto. Lágrimas, risas y amor. La familia Burrón
. Father reads these and his
ESTO
sports newspaper printed with an ink the color of chocolate milk. Father spends whole days indoors in bed, smoking cigarettes and reading. He doesn’t leave the room. The Awful Grandmother brings him his meals on a tray. From outside the door there is nothing but the sound of pages turning and Father laughing like the letter “k.”

^*
The Grandmother saved him her favorite
fotonovelas:

“Wives There Are Plenty, But Mothers—Only One”
“Virgen Santísima, You Killed Her!”
“The So-and-So”
“Women—They’re All Alike!”
“I Killed the Love of My Life”
“Don’t Make Me Commit a Craziness”
“He Doesn’t Give a Damn What You Feel”
“The Story without End”
“The Unhappiest Woman of All”
“I Married a Worker without Culture (But with Me He Became Refined)”
“The Glories of His Love”
“I Was His Queen … Why Did He Change?”
“The Woman with Whom He Had Relations”
“Should I Leave, or What?”
“I Ask God to Guide Me Because I Don’t Know What to Do”

15.

Cinderella

            —
W
henever I enter a room, your Aunty Light-Skin and your Grandmother stop talking.

That’s what Mother says to me when she’s scrubbing our clothes in the rooftop sink. The washerwoman Amparo washes on Mondays, but Mother begins washing our clothes herself, because the Grandmother has been complaining about the high water bills, and the high electric bills, and the servants, and the food bills, and this and this and this. That’s what Mother tells me, spitting it out under her breath when she sprinkles our clothes with the detergent and pours cold water from a coffee can, and washes my brothers’ pants in the stone sink with the ridged bottom, or scrubs a shirt collar with the little straw broom shaped like a dancer’s dress. The coffee can scraping against the ridged bottom, and Mother muttering and spitting and grunting things I can’t quite hear under her breath.

Every afternoon, Mother gets dressed and takes me with her on her walks.

—Lalita, let’s go.

—Where?

—I don’t care.

And every day we walk a little farther. First only to the kiosks at the corner for magazines and Chiclets gum. And later down the boulevard
la calzada de
Guadalupe or Misterios. And sometimes toward downtown. On the shady part of the sidewalk, the sweet smell of oranges. The orange lady on a towel stacking oranges into pretty orange mountains, her baby asleep on a lumpy sack. In another doorway, spread over a
speckled
rebozo
, a pumpkin seed mountain, the pumpkin seeds sold in newspaper cones. A very old man with one eye shut and the other milky holds out his hand and whispers, —Blessed charity, and then roars, —God will pay you back, when we give him two coins.

Other times we walk toward La Villa, the air foggy with the rumble and wheeze and hum of buses and taxis and cars, the yelp and bark and bellow of vendors selling balloons and souvenir photographs and candles and holy cards, and the women slapping sweet
gordita
cookies on the griddle, frying plate lunches, pouring fruit drinks. The burnt smell of
gorditas
and roasted corn.

But we never go inside
la basílica
. We sit in the sun on the plaza steps till our bones warm up and our behinds get tired, eating hot
gorditas
and drinking pineapple sodas, watching a drunk man dancing backward with a dog, a girl crocheting doilies with pink string, a widow under a black umbrella wobbling to church on her knees slowly slowly, like a circus lady on a high wire.

Or sometimes we go toward the stink of the butchers’ market where the heads of the dead bulls—from the bullfights?—slouch in a big sticky pool, their fat ugly tongues drooping, and their eyes full of buzzing flies. —Don’t look!

And one day we even walk into a restaurant on a corner boulevard with shiny green and black tiles on the walls like a checkerboard, inside and out, and metal curtains that open wide onto both boulevards so that when you look in you can see clear to the other street, cars and buses and people coming home from work hurrying past, and a truck with a chain rattling from its bumper sending sparks and dust. And we sit down at a nice table covered in clean brown paper with a salt shaker with grains of uncooked rice mixed in with the salt, and a salt shaker with toothpicks inside, and a drinking glass stuffed with triangle napkins, and the table dances until the waiter wedges a folded match cover under one leg. And we order the lunch special that comes with
fideo
soup and limes, and hot
bolillo
bread and little balls of butter, and a breaded steak, which Mother cuts for me.

On the radio Jorge Negrete is singing a sad song about a flower the river carries away. Mother with those cat-eyed sunglasses, looking out at the street, out at nowhere, out at nothing at all, sighing. A long time. In a new white dress she bought especially for this trip. A sleeveless dress she
ironed herself, that makes her dark skin look darker, like clay bricks when it rains. And I think to myself how beautiful my mother is, looking like a movie star right now, and not our mother who has to scrub our laundry.

Mother breaking toothpicks into a little mountain, until there aren’t any more toothpicks left. When she finally remembers I’m sitting next to her, touches my cheek and asks, —Is there anything else you want, Cinderella? Which means she is in a good mood, because she only calls me that when she isn’t angry and buys me things, Lulú sodas, milk gelatins, cucumber spears, corn on the cob, a mango on a stick.

—Is there anything else you want, Cinderella?

And I’m so happy to have my mother all to myself buying good things to eat, and talking, just to me, without my brothers bothering us.

When we return to the house on Destiny Street, I can’t help it. The happiness bubbles out of my mouth like the fizz from a soda when you shake and shake it. The first thing I say when I run into the courtyard is, —Guess what! We went to a restaurant! And it’s as if we were in a magic spell, my mother and I, but with those words I’ve broken the spell.

The Grandmother makes a face, and Aunty Light-Skin makes a face, and Father makes faces too, and later Mother scolds me and says, —Big-mouth, why did you have to go and tell? But if I wasn’t supposed to tell, why wasn’t I supposed to? And why didn’t Mother tell me not to tell
before
and not after? And now why is everyone angry just because we ate in a restaurant? I don’t know anything, except I know this. I am the reason why Mother is screaming:

—I can’t stand it anymore, I’m getting the hell out of here. I can’t even open the refrigerator and eat an apple if I feel like it.
¡Me voy a largar, me oyes!

And Father saying, —Zoila! Be quiet, they’ll hear you!

And Mother yelling even louder, —I don’t give a good goddamn who hears me!

And then I don’t know why, but I’m crying, and the thing I can’t forget, Mother taking off one of her shoes and tossing it across the room, and later when I think about it, how I’ll remember it different, outdoors, against the night sky, even though it didn’t happen like that. A Mexico City twilight full of stars like the broken glass on top of the garden walls, and a jaguar moon looking down on me, and my mother’s glass shoe flying flying flying across the broken-glass sky.

16.

El Destino Es el Destino

            —
W
hat do you take me for, a machine? Cleaning up last week’s dining room disaster alone was a huge task. Enormous. Monumental. You have no idea of the labor. I’m only flesh and bone, God help me, and what with that lazy Oralia, how am I supposed to handle so much for so many, tell me? And did I mention the expenses? We’re not rich, you know. Thank God for your father’s pension and
tlapalería
, and your sister’s handsome salary. But remember, we’ve lost the income from the two apartments this summer; because I asked the tenants to vacate and leave the rooms for you all. No, I’m not complaining. Of course, I’d rather have my family near. What’s money compared to the joy of having one’s family close by? You have to make sacrifices. Family always comes first. Remember that. Inocencio, haven’t I taught you anything?

The Awful Grandmother complains daily even with the two younger sons and their families gone. To make matters worse, because of the Grandmother’s rages, Oralia has threatened to quit.

—If you don’t like my services,
señora
, you can go ahead and fire me.

—So that you can run off while you still owe me for the cash advances I gave you? Not even if God commanded it! Don’t make faces. Look at me, Oralia, I said look, don’t interrupt, look at me. I’ll find another girl to help you,
te lo juro
. Listen, do you know anyone we can trust? Ask around. See if you can’t find some poor thing from the country. The ones from the country are always more decent and hardworking. I don’t like the idea of people I can’t trust sleeping under my own roof.

But in the end it’s just Candelaria who is finally sent for and delivered
washed, scrubbed, and scoured the following week. A cot is set up in the same rooftop room as Oralia’s, so that she doesn’t have to travel the hours back and forth to her mother’s, except on her one day off. The girl Candelaria is to live in the house of the Grandmother!

—Not for always, don’t you get any illusions, missy, but for now. And you’re to bathe every day and keep your hair very clean, understand? This isn’t the ranch.

So that she might rest a little, so that the dining room repairs can take place without the children running underfoot, the Grandmother insists Father take his family to Acapulco for eight days. It won’t cost much. We can stay at Señor Vidaurri’s sister’s house. Acapulco is only a few hours away. We can drive.

Mother, who never agrees with the Grandmother, begs Father this time:

—Every time we come to Mexico it’s the same old crap. Nothing but living rooms, living rooms, living rooms. We never go anywhere. I’m sick and tired, do you hear? Disgusted!

Finally, Father gives in.

At first the trip to Acapulco is only to include Father and Mother, the six brothers, and me. But the Grandmother sighs so much Father has to ask her to come along.

—Why the hell did you
insist
on bringing her? Mother hisses while she’s packing.

—How could I say no to my own mother? Especially after she was kind enough to loan us the money for this trip.

—Oh, yeah, well, I’ve had it with her damn kindnesses.

—Shhh. The kids.

—Let the kids hear! Better they should find out sooner than later who their grandmother is.

On the morning we are to leave, Aunty Light-Skin and Antonieta Araceli are packed and coming too. The Grandmother has gone herself to the
secundaria
to inform the Mother Superior about my cousin falling ill with
la gripa
.

Even Candelaria is coming along!

Because just as the final suitcase is being lifted to the luggage rack, the Grandmother whines to Father, —Bring her, poor thing. She can help with the babies.

So at the last minute, Candelaria is sent to her rooftop room to fetch a plastic shopping bag filled with a few raggedy clothes. But Candelaria’s village is in Nayarit. She’s never seen the ocean. Before the eight days are up, she will be sent back on the next Tres Estrellas de Oro bus to Mexico City with the Awful Grandmother’s address pinned to her underslip to prevent her from becoming one of the countless unfortunates seen hiccuping terrible tears on the television’s public announcements
 … If you recognize this young lady, please call …
since she is new to the city and can neither read nor write, because a huge Acapulco wave will knock her over, and the ocean will come out of her mouth and eyes and nose for days when it is discovered Candelaria can’t take care of the babies without someone first taking care of her.