Carry Me Like Water (3 page)

The young girl noticed her look of discomfort. “He didn’t mean anything by it,” she said, “he was just messing around. He’s a little
forward, but he’s nice. You speak Spanish?” Helen forced a smile and shook her head. “Oh, then you must be Italian.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m Italian.”

After lunch, Helen stepped out of her house on Emerson Street, and wandered slowly through her English garden. She bent down with a little difficulty and smelled her lavender bush, then the mint growing next to it. She snapped off a leaf from the mint and bit into it. She liked the way the taste exploded in her mouth. The late spring afternoon was too perfect to drive a car. She decided to walk. The northern California breeze was typically light, and the blooming tulip trees swayed softly in the breeze. The wind here was never cruel, never too hot, never threatening—not like El Paso’s. She hated thinking about the place of her birth, but lately that goddamned city had been visiting her like a craving for chocolates. She tired to push the desert from her thoughts. She looked at the green all around her, and took a deep breath. For the first time in five years, the Bay Area had not had a drought. The winter rains had come day after day after day, and now that they were gone everything in Palo Alto was bright green, flowers growing like weeds.

She walked down Emerson a few blocks and took a right on University. She walked into a small bookstore. She had no idea what she was doing in this unfamiliar place. It was Eddie who liked books, not she, and Helen realized she had never been in a bookstore without him. He’s rubbing off on me, she thought. She walked around looking for nothing in particular and found herself standing before the poetry section. She stared at the names of the poets, and read out the titles she found interesting.
The Only Dangerous Thing, Oblique Prayers, Diving into the Wreck, Letters to an Imaginary Friend.
She picked up a small book whose title she could not see from the binding and touched the printed letters with her fingers:
Words Like Fate and Pain.
It was a strange and sad and hopeless title. She wondered about the woman who wrote the book, wondered what it was like to write something, and then allow strangers to read her secrets. Maybe it was a kind of freedom. Or maybe it was just another form of imprisonment. She had no desire to read the book,
but she found herself opening it, she found herself staring at the words, she found herself reading:

For you there was no conscious departure.
no hurried packing for exile.
You are here, anyway, in your own
minor archipelago of pain.

Do what every exile does. Tell stories.
Smuggle messages across the border.
Remember things back there
as simpler than they were.

She did not want to think about the words on the page. She knew she could not bring herself to read anymore, but for some reason she reread the words before shutting the book and placed it back on the shelf. She quickly stepped out of the bookstore. She looked around as if she were afraid someone had seen her in the bookstore. She felt stupid for feeling paranoid. She laughed to herself: “It’s a bookstore—not a sex shop.” She looked at her watch and walked toward the bakery/coffee shop where she was meeting Elizabeth. She thought of the poem as she walked, and was sorry she had not bought the book. And yet she did not want to buy it. She was sure it would be sad; she was sure it would make her remember.

As she crossed the street and slowly made her way toward the coffee shop on the corner of University and Waverly, she shook her head at all the stores that crowded around her. Every other storefront was a restaurant. “You’d think all we do around here is go out to eat. Maybe it’s true. Maybe we’re just a bunch of pigs.” She remembered how one morning she and Eddie had gone running very early in the morning, and how they had run past a shop window that someone had spray-painted:
RENOUNCE YOUR WEALTH RICH SWINE.
She had said nothing, but her husband had laughed. “Good for them,” he said. “Things are too neat around here.” “Maybe
we are
swine,” she said softly, though she did not realty believe it,
did not
believe it. She had lived in Palo Alto for five years now. In the beginning she had loved this peaceful, well-to-do town. It was clean, idyllic; the weather was perfect. She had never lived in a place like this, and living here had made her feel safe. She and her husband
often jogged through the university. Watching the students ride their bikes to class made her feel as if she had become a part of America. She felt silly thinking it, but she thought it anyway. She never told her husband these things. If she had, she would have had to explain more than she wanted him to know. But lately, the material comfort she was living in had begun to make her feel uneasy. The house meant less to her than she thought it would mean. Nothing she had or wore or owned meant as much to her as she thought it would—except for Eddie. Eddie was everything. Her friend Elizabeth was raised here; she had moved to San Francisco because, she claimed, “the City’s not so goddamned while.” “What’s wrong with white?” Helen had asked. Elizabeth had laughed, kissed her on the cheek, and said, “Never mind.” Helen had hated the condescending tone. If Elizabeth knew how I’d been raised, she had thought at the time, then she’d be ashamed of herself for speaking to me in that tone of voice. But hadn’t she led Elizabeth into thinking she was whiter and more sheltered than she actually was? Hadn’t she made Elizabeth believe she was born in the same kind of environment? As she walked past the Burger King, a man asked her for some change. She did not look into his face as she handed him a dollar. “Hope your baby’s bew-tee-ful,” he said. She turned around and smiled at him. “He will be,” she said, then turned around and kept walking. “He will be beautiful,” she said to herself, “he’ll be perfect.” She’d had a dream. She knew it would be a boy—a perfect, smart, happy, handsome boy. She ran back and gave the man another dollar. This time, she made sure she looked into his eyes. She walked away from him slowly. She hugged herself as she arrived at the coffee shop.

There was a short line at the coffee counter. She looked around at the casually well-dressed clientele. “Everything here’s so studied,” she muttered to herself. She felt a sharp and sudden loathing for this town, this place she had made hers but would never really belong to her. She saw no sign of her friend. She ordered a cappuccino for Elizabeth, and a cup of decaf for herself. She found an outside table, and placed Elizabeth’s cup of coffee opposite her own seat. As she took a sip from her cup, she felt the baby moving inside her. She touched her stomach, and tried to enjoy the baby’s dance
in her womb. It hurt—but just a little. The first of a thousand little hurts. “Motherhood hurts—los hijos calan,” She winced at the thought of her mother’s voice. I don’t want her here—not today. Please not today.

“Well, don’t we look stunning?”

Helen looked up and laughed. “Yes, we do, don’t we? It’s the extra passenger. Does wonders for your complexion.”

“You really are radiant. How can you stand it?” Elizabeth bent down and kissed Helen on the cheek. She sat down and played with the cup of coffee in front of her. “What do I owe you for the coffee?”

“Don’t be silly, Elizabeth, it’s on my husband.”

“Ahh yes, the husband. How’s the husband?”

“He’s as gorgeous as ever. We’ve fallen back in love with each other—didn’t I tell you?”

“I never knew you were out of love.”

“Well, not exactly out of love—just, you know, seven-year itch kind of thing.”

“No, I don’t know. My longest relationship has been two years—my men have shorter attention spans than Eddie. On the other hand, my relationships never last long enough to get boring.”

“I didn’t say we were bored.”

“Isn’t that what the seven-year itch is—boredom?”

“No, I think it’s just that we were getting a little too used to each other. You know, taking each other for granted. But suddenly, it’s as intense as ever—emotionally, I mean.”

“How long’s all this emotional intensity going to last?”

“I know that tone, Elizabeth Edwards. Don’t be so cynical.”

“My first boyfriend, who never tired of telling me he loved me, broke up with me because I wouldn’t have sex with him—then told half the school I gave him a blow job. My first real serious boyfriend left me for another man. My second real serious boyfriend was more passionate about cocaine than he was about me. My first husband—not one year into the marriage—had a heart attack in the arms of another woman, and my current beefcake is a sex addict. He asked me last night if I was interested in three-way sex. I didn’t ask him if he had another woman in mind, another man, a dog, a horse, or
a snake. I know this is 1992, Helen, and God knows I’m anything but moralistic about what happens between consenting adults—but Jesus H. Christ, I just want something that resembles sanity. So Helen, I’m not cynical—though God knows I’ve a right to be—I’m just asking a question.”

Helen shook with laughter. “I’ve forgotten your question.”

“I asked, ‘How long will this love nest of yours last?’”

“Does it matter? We’re happy. As soon as we become parents, we’ll forget about love and each other and obsess about the kid.”

“Just try and be nice to each other, will you? Look at my parents—every one of their children is all screwed up—and all because they forgot they were married to each other.”

“Every one of their children, Lizzie? There’s only two of you.”

“And we’re both basket cases.”

“Oh, you brother’s fine—he’s nice.”

“I think he’s a transvestite.”

“How do you know that? Did he tell you?”

“Of course he didn’t tell me. Transvestites don’t make confessions to members of their families.”

“So what makes you think he’s a transvestite?”

“I found a silk dress in his closet.”

“What were you doing in his closet?”

“Never mind.”

“You know, it could be his girlfriend’s.”

“His girlfriend dresses like June Cleaver—not the silk-dress type.”

Helen laughed. “I wish you still lived across the street. I miss you, Lizzie, when are you moving back?”

“This dump? Never. I grew up in a Protestant suburb of Chicago called Libertyville. No one could recover from that, Helen, no one—everyone there is as screwed up as they are white. And then my dad gets this job in what we now call Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley!—shit, that’s worse than Libertyville. When I was in high school my father used to take me to the Hoover Tower and when we’d get up to the top, we’d look out at the Stanford campus, and he’d tell me, ‘This is your school, baby—it’s all yours.’ When I didn’t get in, he blamed the ‘chinks’ and the ‘blacks’ for using up my assigned place in the select school of his choice. It didn’t seem to matter to him
that I had nothing but C’s and D’s—and I was stoned out of mind when I took the SAT …” As she continued talking, Helen watched her friend intently and smiled to herself. It didn’t matter in the least to Lizzie that Helen was intimately familiar with every detail of the story she was telling. But Helen didn’t mind: Lizzie’s voice was warm and intense and comforting, the sound of a woman who was real, who enjoyed being alive, enjoyed having a voice, and understood the great pleasure of using it. Helen envied her spontaneity—Helen who was cautious, Helen who was often conspicuously quiet.

The light pink in Lizzie’s short fingernails flew around in the air, and her long, cheap, flamboyant earrings dangled like chimes in the wind as she emphasized the point she was making. “… of course, my parents have never really gotten over my attitudes. Well, I’ve never gotten over theirs. Did I ever tell you about the time I asked my mother if she’d ever had oral sex with my father? She really lost it.”

Helen smiled. “Yes, you told me. But what did you expect? Did you expect her to tell you about her sex life? Give the old girl a break.”

“You always take her side.”

“That’s not true. Why are you always expecting your mother to be someone she’s not? You know her; you know her borders, her limitations—what you can and can’t say. Why do you expect her to change just for you?”

“Well, that’s what’s so wrong with this pop stand of a town—it has too many lines you can’t cross. Everyone’s busy writing their stupid scripts and reading them as if they were the truth. You know, Helen, sometimes people have to depart from the roles their parents hand them. It’s so sickening to watch all the energy people exert in this place to look and be
sooo
sophisticated, but once you get inside their houses you might as well be living in a small town in Texas. It’s all for nothing, Helen.”

“And San Francisco’s better?”

“Yes, it’s better.”

“There aren’t any snobs in San Francisco?”

“Oh, there are plenty of snobs. If we made them illegal, they’d
start speakeasies.” She laughed. “But in the City—in the City at least everybody’s all mixed up with everybody else. Here, in this small town for the overly paid, everybody believes in recycling, everybody drinks expensive coffee, everybody buys organic vegetables and chicken breasts from free-range chickens. But all the Blacks and Latinos who work behind the counters live in the next town. I don’t want any part of it.”