Hungry Woman in Paris (2 page)

I got up from my pew and went to look at the body. My mother did not follow me. Nobody wanted to be first. I was glad to have
a few seconds with Luna, my favorite cousin, before anyone else had the courage to go up after me. I smiled at Luna’s over-made-up
face. She hated pink lipstick, but here she was in pink for eternity. Luna was more of a red. She loved living life in extremes,
like me. When we were little girls we played like boys and hated dolls. We were a pair of mocosas, rascals always getting
into trouble. We swore that when we got older we would travel the world and never marry or have children because we would
always play. We wanted to be a part of history and make history. We wished we could have been born around the time writers
and artists hung out in Paris, like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, or in Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution, like Diego
and Frida. Luna was special. She could guess things or predict things before they happened. Her family thought she was just
weird, but I knew she was psychic. She was silly when she wanted to be, but wise beyond her years. When everyone around me
told me I was crazy for wanting to be a journalist covering all sorts of dangerous stories, Luna would join me on my adventures
to catch a story.

In female friendships, a man always comes between them—isn’t that the predictable plot? In our story, Luna met a guy and I
remained single. I was never jealous of him, but he wasn’t good enough for her. He was Mr. Now, but Luna was forced to make
him into Mr. Forever when her parents grew concerned that “the neighbors were talking.” They married her off before she “got
knocked up,” to this poor guy who could barely afford to support her and keep her gold-plated birdcage locked. Luna couldn’t
go to college and had to play the housewife, a role she was never born for. She got so depressed she gained weight and developed
diabetes. When she wanted to get pregnant she couldn’t, because the doctors warned her it might kill her. She tried anyway
but had miscarriages, which made her even more depressed. Her world kept shrinking, but her body kept growing. Her dreams
were larger than life, too big to exist in this world in a woman’s body.

I covered my eyes and started crying. Flashes of my life with Luna exploded like the big bang onto the little movie theater
of my mind. I remembered my first bicycle ride with her and all the promises we made to each other. We were ten, hiding in
the attic, leafing through a dirty magazine we had found on the street near an alley. We criticized all the couples and laughed
together, not understanding what would motivate adults to make such funny faces. We laughed so hard, thinking we were so smart,
knowing that we shared true happiness. Luna told me I was not just her cousin but her best of best friends and said that if
I were not alive, she would not want to live anymore. I hugged her and said that I would not want to live in a world without
her either.

“Is it true what your Tía Bonifacia is saying about you and Armando being over because you couldn’t agree on the menu?” my
mother, who had joined me at the casket, whispered into my ear, so Luna couldn’t hear. Her question jolted me back to the
present and I quickly wiped away all my tears. I couldn’t believe my Tía Bonifacia knew about the menu. How could she have
known? She should work for the CIA or the
National Enquirer
. Maybe she’s psychic… Actually, all women are psychic. When a man cheats on a woman and lies to her, she already knows;
she just lies to herself. This was the case with Tía Bonifacia. She was a poster child for what happens when a woman stays
married to a man who is constantly unfaithful: she turns bitter. If she were a fruit she would be a lemon, always frowning
like she just sucked on one.

“Yes. It’s true,” I whispered back. Poor Luna had to endure this pettiness even on her last day. My mother practically went
hysterical at my response. She couldn’t believe that despite all her hard work, all the guilt trips, all the bad advice about
how women are nothing without men, how careers are not as important as family and children, all the scripts in her “Third
World Woman as Servant” file in her brain that she tried to install on my mental hard drive, I was not getting married in
two months.

“Tú de veras estás loca,” she hissed again. “You really are crazy” was her usual response to anything I did that was out of
the ordinary. It used to upset me to be called
loca,
but I was too heartbroken by Luna’s death to care about what my mother thought about me. When she called me loca it wasn’t
the fun loca, as in Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” but the “there is really something wrong with you and we should
lock you up with the crazies” loca.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I wanted to yell back at her to shut her up and respect Luna’s memory, but I would be seen
as the one disrespecting this sacred rite. I ignored my mother’s comment and left a red rose on Luna’s chest. My mother immediately
followed behind me and cornered me. My older sister Reina, having overheard that the wedding was off, jumped into the conversation.

“But I just bought a very expensive designer dress for your wedding and I can’t take it back,” she said, getting no sympathy
from me.

I ignored their feeding frenzy by changing the subject. I handed my mother several twenty-dollar bills.

“What’s this?” my mother asked.

“It’s a donation for Luna’s parents for the funeral. I know this is going to cost them a lot of money. Tía Lucia shouldn’t
have to worry about that on top of her grief,” I informed her. Her mood changed all of sudden.

“Yes, you may be a loca, but you have always had a good heart. We should ask all your brothers and sisters to put in money
también to give to your Tía Lucia. At least this will comfort her,” said my mother. “Does anyone have an envelope?” Reina
opened her Gucci bag and took out an envelope. She handed it to my mother and then pulled out her designer pen and wrote an
amount on one of her Republican checks. Each check order was a donation toward the Republican Party. I didn’t know they needed
money since it seems only rich people are Republicans. Oh, wait, not true: there are Hispanic Republicans, former welfare
recipients who got out, or former undocumented people, or their children, who made it and therefore think anyone who doesn’t
make it is just lazy; Cubans who hate Castro; Texans whose parents were beaten for speaking Spanish in school; and other Latinos
with internalized racism. Yeah, now I remember; I did an article on this for a newspaper I used to work for.

I rolled my eyes when I saw her check, and she came back at me with attitude.

“Yeah, well, at least he’s not screwing his interns.”

“I’d rather have a president who drops his load on blue dresses than one who drops bombs on innocent people for oil.” Then
I added something I’d seen on a bumper sticker: “When Clinton lied, no one died.”

“Cochina,” my mother reprimanded me for my sexual reference. “You talk like a man.”

“He’s doing a good job defending our country from terrorists!” Reina said.

The whole president-as-father-figure-and-protector thing has Freudian implications, and I did not want to go there with my
sister. I just wanted to be left alone to cry for Luna. Reina mistook my silence as a sign that she was right, and went on
talking about all the good “W” has done. “So what that the weapons of mass destruction were not found yadda yadda yadda. .
. .”

I went to “Lalala land,” my safe place where Republicans did not exist, where only people who cared about people and cared
to be people peopled this land… Reina had stopped talking and I was about to get away when she got up to me real close and
delivered her message à la
The Graduate
.

“Responsibility… You need to grow up and be responsible now. You’re going to be turning thirty and, yes, you may be beautiful
now, but you won’t be forever.”

Now I got it: she’s always been jealous of me. For some reason, being beautiful rendered me an idiot in her eyes and lots
of other peoples’ too. That must be one of the universal laws I didn’t know about. One of those unwritten rules women are
unconsciously told: you must be beautiful or intelligent, but you can’t be both because it confuses men.

“Is that what happened to you?” I said.

“Bitch!” she spat out. Wow, I wasn’t even dead yet and I was getting my wish.

My mother quickly jumped in between us, took my sister’s check, and added it to my money. I walked away to go comfort Tía
Lucia, who was crying in the corner. On my way to her I overheard Tía Bonifacia, with her arms crossed, telling one of my
cousins how Luna died.

“She drank six Cokes. She was a diabetic; she knew what she was doing. It was a suicide; call it what it was. There’s no shame
in the truth,” Tía Bonifacia preached.

The corpulent cousin shook her head and noted, “Suicide is a sin, qué no?”

All right, call me a metiche, but I just couldn’t stand back and say nothing. “The truth? You don’t know what the truth is!”
I yelled at Tía Bonifacia.

“Oh, no, please don’t say that movie line ‘You can’t handle the truth’—por favor, we are at a wake,” my stupid cousin said.
She was so annoying; that was the most original line she had ever said in her life.

In the midst of our soon-to-be argument, I watched my mother hand Tía Lucia the envelope full of money. Tía Lucia handed my
mother another envelope. My mother quickly put it away, folding it and hiding it between her breasts. My mother used to hide
a gun between her breasts whenever she and my father would drive back to Mexico. It was a little security measure in case
they were stopped by bandits on the empty desert roads at night. Occasionally she lost money in there and would swear that
it was like the Bermuda Triangle, but most of the time it was the safest place in the world.

“I do know what the truth is. I was there when she died.” Tía Bonifacia raised her voice, not wanting to be outdone. The mourners
stopped talking and turned to us.

I defended Luna: “It could have been an accident.”

“No! She drank six Cokes. That’s like fifty-four spoonfuls of sugar. We did the math; that’s no accident. It was suicide!”
Tía Bonifacia said it so loud to prove her point, but her insistence made everyone uncomfortable. If someone is dead, that’s
one thing, but knowing how they died, that’s another. And then knowing that they did it on purpose, well that’s just TMI,
as a shallow acquaintance once said after I shared with her that my toenail looked like the Grand Canyon. “Too much information—I’m
eating,” she said and looked back down at the
Vogue
she was reading.

Tía Lucia cried out like she had spilled a basket full of flour that the wind had quickly swept away. I wanted to slap Tía
Bonifacia. What gave this 250-pound gorilla the right to hurt people with her gossip?

“You’re right,” I spat at her, “if it’s the truth, there’s no shame in it. Maybe Luna did want to die rather than live a life
as miserable as yours. Maybe for her that was not good enough because she didn’t want to end up a bitter old chismosa like
you!”

My cousin looked up at me and couldn’t believe I was challenging the Goliath of Gossip. Man, I was a dead duck, but I didn’t
care. The dirt this woman was going to dig up on me, and the comments that she could throw out like daggers, but so what.
Truth be told, I was doing the best I could with my life, even if no one else thought so.

“Now I understand why your fiancé dumped you,” she said, being sure to make eye contact with her audience. “I thought it was
because you were a puta.” The aahs and gasps from our audience issued as planned to the ever-popular “puta” comment. What
a desperate attempt, how typical to always resort to “whore” for a strike at a woman’s Achilles’ heel. “Pero now I know it’s
because of that mouth of yours. Who’d want to be stuck with you forever?” The crowd around us “Ooohed” and “Aaahed” as though
they were watching the first round of a De La Hoya vs. Tyson fight. Clearly I was out of her league and her gossip weight
class, but I couldn’t let her get away with her comments.

I immediately wanted to defend myself, but if I did, I would be validating her comments and I would lose. I took three deep
breaths. That’s what Buddhist monks do, I’ve been told, and I let her comments pass like water being flushed down a toilet
at a Tijuana bar. Then I went for the throat, metaphorically speaking. I should have bit her ear, but instead I nonchalantly
said, “Then I must congratulate your husband for being a saint and staying with you… Oh, wait, he’s cheated on you with
your neighbor, your cousin, and even your own sister.” Someone gasped. Yes, I had scored a point. “I guess being stuck with
you forever is his punishment, qué no?” I said this with a smile the size of the dam blocking all my rage. I heard small murmurs
of agreement from the crowd. I was about to talk about her bastard grandchildren, pothead son, welfare scam, and all the other
crap that Jerry Springer and Spanish talk-show knockoffs feed off, but thank God my Tía Lucia stepped in before I went for
a knockout.

“Por favor, stop this! Please respect Luna’s memory and stop this!”

I lowered my guard and made for the door. My mother and all my siblings hurried after me. I headed to the parking lot, trying
to make a fast escape.

“Go apologize to your Tía Bonifacia and your Tía Lucia for that escándalo you just made!” my mother demanded.

“No. Tell her to apologize to me first,” I yelled back, marching toward my Prius. My father also walked up to talk to me.

“I knew you weren’t going to go through with it. You’re not a woman men marry.” I stopped for a second, hooked by his mean
comment. Then I decided to let it go and kept on walking.

“If you leave like this, you’re not going to be welcome at the funeral,” my mother warned me. I hesitated and stopped to consider
the consequences. I wanted to attend Luna’s funeral, but how could she have committed suicide? Why hadn’t she called me to
let me know things were so bad? Why hadn’t she come to me for help?

“Think about what you are doing,” my sister Rosie said. “Armando is a good guy. He really loves you.” Rosie was my favorite
sister, she always came from a good place, but I was in so much pain even her beautiful words annoyed the hell out of me.
How come everyone else knew everything I needed to do right with my life except for me? How come everyone knew what was good
for me except for me? How come I was supposed to listen to all this crap just because it came from my family?