Let Their Spirits Dance (29 page)

“That night, we were boozing it up, playing cards and our whole thing was, a la chingada con todo, you know, fuck this shit. Jesse was with us, but you know him, he was always a cut above us. He didn't lose control like we did, even if he was high. There was this whole table of gabachos in the place, and this girl, a real pretty Vietnamese girl Jesse knew, was waiting on them. Her name was Thom. She showed me and Jesse her name on a piece of paper once, and she spelled it with an
h
but she pronounced it Tom. She said it meant beautiful smell. She wasn't one of the whores, just a girl who cleaned the place up and helped out when it got busy. Well, this big ol' white guy, we called him Tennessee, 'cause that's where he was from…anyway, he starts grabbing Thom, and she starts screaming and telling him to let her go. Jesse's watching the whole thing. All of a sudden Jesse throws his cards down on the table and yells at the guy, ‘Leave her alone!' He yelled real loud, like he was roaring at the guy, you know in his sergeant's voice. The guy grabs Thom one more time, and Jesse stands up. ‘I said, leave her alone!' By this time the guy's pushed Thom away and is standing up. He must have been over six feet two, and you know Jesse, he was short. ‘Did somebody say something?' he asks, playing all dumb. He shakes his head like there's a bug flying around. ‘I thought I heard a fly buzz.' All the white guys start laughing like they're gonna piss in their pants. Tennessee looks at Thom again, and Jesse says, ‘Don't touch her, fucker.' Then Tennessee says, ‘Who's gonna
stop me?' And your brother says ‘I am.' I tell him, ‘Calmate, Jesse, we don't want no trouble with these jodidos, they'll call in the MPs, you know they're a bunch of fuckin' crybabies.'

“Tennessee walked over to Jesse, and Jesse looked so short next to him, I thought the guy was just gonna hammer him on the head. By now everybody's standing up, all the Chicanos and the white guys. ‘A la madre,' Pete says, ‘get ready to kick ass, vatos.' And that's what we were gonna do, back Jesse up, protect his back, no matter what happened. One thing los vatos didn't know was that Jesse was El Gato. I told them…hey watchale, you're looking at El Gato. They didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Everything came down in a couple of seconds. Before Tennessee could blink, Jesse swung a right-left combination to his body and landed him flat on his back. El pendejo gabacho just lay there with all the air beat out of him. Jesse jumped on a chair like Superman and yelled, ‘COME ON, FUCKERS! COME ON! WHO'S NEXT? WE'RE IN THEIR COUNTRY, FUCKERS, AIN'T YOU GOT NO RESPECT?' The white guys just looked at him like they were in the twilight zone. We were ready to wipe them out, now that their main man was down. We were all pumped up, and it was gonna be a scramble when we heard this whistle and the MPs showed up with Lieutenant Hopkins. The MPs were ready to rumble too, they had their billy clubs out. They lived on shit like this. But the lieutenant was cool, a todo dar, he didn't give a damn what color you were as long as you were doing what you were supposed to do. He looks at your brother on the chair and yells at the top of his lungs ‘RAMIREZ!'…the whole place freezes, then he yells, ‘Sit on it!' and Jesse says, ‘Yes, sir,' and sits on the chair like he was innocent as a lamb. Lieutenant Hopkins looks at all of us, then he looks at Tennessee on the floor and gives him a dirty look and all he says is ‘Gentlemen, as you were.' Then he walks out, like he didn't give a shit if we burned the place down. When the white guys saw we had back up from him, they sat down and left Tennessee rolling around on the floor.”

“The overhand right-left hook was Jesse's best combination. I wish I could have seen him do it on that guy! El Gato…the winner!”

“Well, he used his combination that night. And that was the night I found out Thom was Jesse's girlfriend. Her family lived just outside Bien Hoa on this little farm. They were Catholic and Buddhists mixed, but mostly Catholic, because I remember Jesse and Thom went to church one Sunday. Her father was with the South Vietnamese Army, and that's what got the whole family in big trouble when Saigon fell.”

“She's the same one Jesse mentioned in his letters, but he never told me her name. He told me she was teaching him Vietnamese.”

“What could he say about her anyway? That he fell in love with a Vietnamese girl, not the kind of girl he could bring back home to Mom? Not that Thom was a whore, or any of that, just that it took guts to get married to one of their women and to bring her back to the States. If he had lived, I think Jesse would have brought her back. That's all he talked about before he was killed, about Thom, and he told me to take care of her if something happened to him. But you know me, I never did anything for anybody. I just lost track of her, even when I went back the second time, I couldn't find her.”

“Remember, Jesse always wanted a girlfriend. He loved Neil Diamond's ‘Solitary Man,' cause he was always looking for the right woman, and never found her. Do you think this woman…Thom, was the one who called Mom?”

“Could have been.”

“What happened the day my brother was killed?”

“The day Jesse was killed. I wish I could forget that day forever!”

“Tell me how he died. Did he say anything?”

“No, nothing. There was no time. I was walking point the day Jesse was killed, and the guys were depending on me to lead us over this hill, but it wasn't a hill, it was more like a big mound. I later found out it was a place where people buried their garbage.

Can you imagine what we fought for? The officers would always say ‘Pack up, we got some humping to do!' We were the grunts, doing all the shitty work. We were made of flesh and bone, but the officers back at headquarters only saw us as pins on their maps. They never told us where we were going, how far we'd come, nada. We were running in circles, chasing our own tails.

“I stood for a minute thinking what the bad smell was, and looking at maggots crawling through the dirt, when Jesse was hit, right through the neck. I didn't even know, 'til Pete screamed like he was half-crazy, ‘Jesse's down! Jesse's down! Call the medics.'

“Tennessee was in the middle of it again. I heard Jesse was hauling him over to a trench 'cause he was hit in the stomach. That's when Jesse was hit, right there, after he rolled Tennessee's body into the trench.

“Man, it made me sick just to think about it! Me? I would have said let his buddies roll his white ass into the trench! I didn't give a shit about him. That's what I would have done after what happened at the bar. But
you know Jesse, he wasn't like that. The medics came in a Huey, but it was too late, Jesse died before I got to him. All I did was take off my shirt and cover his face. I couldn't stand to see him for the last time like that. I remember somebody was yelling. Later, the guys told me it was me…I was yelling. I can't even remember what I was saying.”

I think of Jesse with Chris's shirt over his face. “Oh, God, I wish I had been there to touch him one last time!”

The silence between Chris and me is greater than the darkness. I think of Li Ann in my second-grade class and her mother Huong and wonder if Thom looked like Huong, delicate, fragile, almost a child. The women exchange profiles, hands, feet, until Huong's face becomes Thom's. I wish Jesse had told me more about Thom. Is it jealousy I'm feeling or anger that Jesse left me out of this part of his life? Having a girlfriend was one of his dreams. The stuck-up American kind didn't attract him, and I could see how a gentle woman like Thom could have won his heart.

We hear voices singing outside our door. Chris opens the door, and it's Yellowhair and Gates singing and doing the stroll. They're dancing through an imaginary line, then back again.

“Hey, you two, hold it down! Don't you have any respect? Everybody's asleep.”

Yellowhair notices me standing at the door. “Hey, Teresa, you and Chris come on out here and do the stroll with us! Come on, don't you remember how to do it?”

Chris closes the door, and reaches for my hands in the dark. He's holding my hands so tight my fingers ache. “OK, that's all I know, Teresa. I lost track of your brother that day. Then to make it worse, I didn't ride with him on the plane back to the base. I've been kicking myself for it all these years! Forgive me! Will you?”

Chris wipes the tears off my face, and I do the same for him. “You lost track of my brother! Then you just let him go off by himself. In a body bag? I don't even want to think about it!”

“You don't want to think about it? How do you think I felt? I'm asking you to forgive me.”

“I'm not blaming you. There's nothing to forgive you for, Chris. You were a kid yourself. You didn't know what to do. You didn't do anything wrong.” I press my forehead into Chris's shoulder. He holds me in his arms.

“Say it again,” he says.

“You didn't do anything wrong.” Chris cups my face in his hands,
then with one finger he traces over my lips. He presses his finger up to his own lips.

“Your tears taste sweet.”

“Liar.” We both laugh.

The singing outside gets louder. Chris opens the door. Security lights have gone on in the parking lot.

“You guys are gonna get us thrown out—shut up!” Chris turns around and kisses me. “Wanna stroll, Teresa?”

“Yeah, been waiting thirty years.” I brush away new tears, and slip into my shoes.

Yellowhair and Gates make a line and Chris and me do the stroll through the center. We're all singing and clapping. The guy from the office comes out.

“I know you're the Ramirez family,” he says. “But so help me, if you guys don't get into your rooms, I'm calling the cops.”

“We've already met them,” Gates says sarcastically.

Priscilla comes out of her room, “What are you, crazy? Teresa, have you flipped?”

“Come on, Priscilla,” I tell her. “You and Manuel. Let's stroll.”

“Hell, no!”

I hear Manuel's voice from a distance. “You guys better settle down. This guy's serious. He
will
call the cops.”

“All right, everybody,” Chris says. “Let's go to bed.” He walks off with Gates and Yellowhair. I see lights here and there in the motel windows. One man yells, “Shut up out there! Can't a person get some sleep around here?”

“It's over,” I tell Priscilla and Manuel. “They didn't do anything wrong.”

Priscilla's got her hands on her hips. “What's that got to do with this mess?”

“Everything,” I tell her.

 

• W
E'VE GOT MORE COMPANY
as we drive out of Topeka on Wednesday, June 4. Pepe and his brother Gonzalo are tagging along in their Dodge pick-up. They're two men Chris and the others met at the Highlander. Their long-bed is packed with cases of beer. I didn't even know there were Chicanos in Topeka, but they assure me there are plenty. Some of them work on farms like they do. Both men are short
and stocky, their skin tanned dark brown from hours of labor in the sun. They tell us their mother died of a broken heart one year after their brother's death. She never got to go to the Wall, and now they want to go pay their respects to their brother.

I'm proud that the boundaries of Aztlán are getting wider and wider. Don Florencío would be glad to know just how far we've come from the seven caves our ancestors lived in. The Indian huehues would have applauded, saying la raza was right to return north, to Aztlán, the place of their origin.

Manuel refused to rent another vehicle for Pepe and Gonzalo and told them if they wanted to join us to use their own car. Mom told Manuel to let them come. They're poor boys, she says, who lost their older brother, Gustavo, in Vietnam. And then, to make everything worse, their mother died, too. Can you imagine such suffering?

I don't say anything to Mom about Chris losing track of Jesse the day he was killed. It doesn't matter what happened on the field that day. Jesse went after Tennessee, and if he hadn't, he wouldn't have been the brother I knew. I want to know more about Thom, the woman Jesse loved. Beautiful smell. Did she love him back? Is she still alive?

This morning Chris is like a kid wanting to please me, like Manuel when he gave me chocolate valentines.

M
ichael tells me light runs in waves that don't interfere with each other even when they cross paths. How can this be? You'd think the elements would merge, yet everything remains distinct, every electron orbiting separately from the others, yet “conscious” of everything else around it. Our reality is really only stable light. In another dimension we might be traveling at the speed of light and our concept of time would be eternal. We wouldn't look at things horizontally or vertically because all points in space would be equal. That's the way it is with us, we're traveling in one light beam all the way to the Wall, an unbroken web with Jesse somewhere in the middle. Still, we're separate from each other, thinking our own thoughts, connecting with him in a hundred different ways.

I think the Guadalupanas wanted Chris and me to fall in love. They know it's not happening. How they know, I can't say. I think they're disappointed with us, even though I know they stayed with their husbands and slept all their lives in their marriage beds. There's a sad frowning in their faces, lines that yesterday were anticipating some new love story unfolding before their eyes are now back in place.

Chris is still in love with Margie. Maybe he's thinking the bad times between them weren't so bad and the good times were better. I'm always remembering bad times between me and Ray. I don't want to think about the good times. Maybe I chose Ray to satisfy my craving for
suffering and appease the Indian blood coursing through my veins. I'm wondering if I'm an addict for suffering, a freak who looks for the wrong choice to make, the wrong step to take. My mom and Irene memorized the formula for suffering before they were born. They have accepted it the way they accept their swollen feet and aching knees. Cold, uncaring men, traitors, are part of their plan to prick their own flesh with pins.

I think of Thom and Huong, Li Ann's mother, one and the same being, little women who bear great secrets and great suffering. Where is she, this woman who held my brother's heart in the palm of her hand? Chris is of no help. He never found Thom. There's a part of me that wants to fly from D.C. to Saigon.

 

• W
E LEAVE
T
OPEKA
later than we planned. By the time the men got up and dealt with their hangovers, it was almost noon. Passing through Kansas City, Kansas, we pay a toll before we get into Missouri. This is new to us, and something we'll have to get used to. People everywhere recognize us. Sometimes they follow us in their vehicles for a short distance. At times, we spot a helicopter flying overhead, signaling another news story about our whereabouts. It's as if America is caught up in a mystery story: “Where are the Ramirezes?”

We stop at gas stations and people ask us how Mom's doing. Some people want to shake her hand, others take her picture. It's unbelievable, I tell Chris. Mom's getting famous in her old age. At a gas station in Kansas, Missouri, I get on the laptop with Michael, and see messages from the man in Little Saigon who calls himself, [email protected]. Several people are standing close to the van. They spot Mom and Irene through the windows, and start waving. Mom and Irene smile and wave back.

“Hams,” I tell Chris. “These old Guadalupanas are two big hams!”

It doesn't take us long to cross over the Kansas River and drive into Missouri. Truman was born on the Missouri side. Still, who is he to me? Another unknown I read about in history books. There's a sign advertising a prairie house, and it reminds me of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author who wrote about her days as a child in the 1800s. Chris tells me part of the Civil War was fought in Missouri. The Battle of Lexington, he says, was a big one. I'm wondering if the men and women of Aztlán, who walked as one and huddled together in circles at the end of the day, came
this far. Is it just my family who's passing through to remind the world that Aztlán existed?

On our way to St. Louis we pass a restaurant owned by someone named Ruiz-Castillo, Everybody wants to stop there and have some Mexican food. We park our cars along the road to talk about it, and finally decide that it wouldn't be worth it. The food's not the kind we have in Phoenix, Manuel says, and just think of the time we'll lose.

At St. Louis, the Guadalupanas want to stop at a church to say a rosary, and almost make us stop as we cross over into Illinois and they see a sign advertising Our Lady of Snows shrine. Chris tells me we'll lose two hours by the time they get out of the van and into the shrine and everybody else stops to take pictures and buy souvenirs. Then there are tourists to contend with, and people who want to get Mom's autograph, as if she's a movie star. He says we have to keep moving so we can get to Richmond, Indiana, before dark. My mother's face is pale today, and she's complaining of an upset stomach. Irene gives her half a lemon to suck on, telling her this will stop the nausea. I'm worried it's more than that, maybe her heart condition is disguising itself as indigestion. I tell her we can stop at a hospital somewhere, and she says that will make us lose even more time. I'm tempted to call Dr. Mann, but Mom says he'll only scold her, and why should she listen to him, since he's in Arizona and she's in Missouri? The road through St. Louis leads us into Illinois. We cross over a bridge into Illinois, and spot gambling boats at Station Casino. There are ferryboats like the ones in Mark Twain's stories, chugging away through the water. St. Louis boasts buildings with huge spires, and a gigantic metal arch separating Missouri from Illinois. Everywhere there are buildings constructed in French Colonial style.

We're finally in Indiana, the Crossroads of America. I'm not impressed with what I see of Indianapolis; most of the buildings we pass are old and look small. I'm amazed at the history all around us, though, places that look like scenes out of an English colony. We pass a town named Terre Haute, and I wonder if it's a British name, French name, or Indian, or a combination of all three.

By the evening of Wednesday, June 4, we reach Richmond. The Guadalupanas are sleeping on top of each other in the back seat. Mom's using Irene's shoulder as her pillow, and Irene is leaning on a real pillow propped up against the window. The motels in Richmond are packed, and the TraveLodge where Manuel made our reservations lost our paperwork. The manager was very upset when he realized who we were,
but there was nothing to be done, outside of driving miles from where we were to another motel that had room. Chris and I suggest the Sheraton or the Hilton to Mom, and she says no. That's for rich people, she says, and what if the kids break something? Now we're stuck driving up and down the main street, searching for another place.

We find out the reason everything's so crowded is that medical people have descended upon Richmond to attend, of all things, a convention on aging and geriatric care. A convention called the Intergenerational Communication Link is going on. That might be lucky for me, if they could help me understand the two old women I've been traveling with these days, help me understand why they had to make this journey now, when they both know my mother's heart condition could lead to her death. Why don't they go back home and grow passion vines? They'd see the story of suffering each day in the palm of their hands. Mom and Irene don't tell me what's going on inside of them. They're keeping secrets they only share with La Virgen, the mother of all mothers. I want to shout at them, “Dying is real!” but it's no use. They would just look at me, and ask how many more miles to the Wall.

We finally manage to get rooms at the Budget Motel, a place with lopsided mini-blinds and frayed carpet. The guys we picked up in Kansas, Pepe and Gonzalo, say they've stayed in the motel before, which makes it all seem worse. Management is scurrying around spraying air freshener and supplying us with extra towels. The woman, who tells me she runs the motel at night, says she read about us in the newspaper. Her uncle went to Vietnam, she says, and now he's in a veteran's hospital suffering from diabetes, which isn't connected to the war, but keeps him in a place that reminds him of the war all the time.

Our room smells of cigarettes, and there's nothing we can do about it. The kids take a room upstairs and Cisco almost flips Michael over the balcony rail when he tries his fireman's carry hold on him. It's a hold that means the opponent gets thrown a few yards up in the air. A fellow motel resident ran out to stop the fight and found out it wasn't really a fight, which made him mad. He looked like a Hell's Angel, and I think he was disappointed when he couldn't use the knife he had unsheathed. The Wall is only one day away. We'll be in Frederick, Maryland, before nightfall tomorrow, and there's nothing left to do after that but turn our faces toward the Wall. We've decided to do laundry at Frederick and get things ready for our entrance into D.C. Mom says she doesn't want Jesse to see her in dirty clothes. I remind her that Jesse can't “see” her, but she says she wants to look nice.

At two o'clock in the morning, I still can't sleep. I'm sharing a room with Lisa and Lilly. The girls went to sleep without turning off the TV. I find the remote and turn it off. The room goes dark, except for light from the lamppost illuminating the window. I hear people in their rooms, a man and woman arguing. Thumps on the wall, a TV still on. I get up and open the door, looking up into a moonless, starless sky. Scattered raindrops are falling with big spaces between them, reflecting colors from cars and dark specks from puddles on the asphalt. Everything is dreary. I miss Ray. I miss Chris. Maybe I miss being held in the arms of a man and lying back to pretend the world belongs only to us, that the magic between us will keep until morning.

I walk out the door and regret taking a deep breath. The smell of the city streets gets caught in my throat. I look up at the balcony and see Chris at one end, leaning on the rail smoking a cigarette. He doesn't see me in the dark. He finishes his cigarette and flicks the dying ember to the ground. He stands looking up at the sky with his hands in his pockets. I want to walk up the stairs and put my arms around him, but I don't. It will only open up all the pain, and tonight I'm so weary, if I hear anything more I'll burst. I wonder if he's talking to Jesse.