Tarnished Beauty (23 page)

“My parents believe that it's time I get married,” she said, eyeing me boldly. “But I prefer to see the world without a husband in tow. And when I do marry, it will be to someone of my own choosing.” She drew a line with her toe in the dirt between us, and I was struck by how different she was from Rosa. One woman had been blessed with incomparable beauty, and an unassuming spirit, while the other, who from this vantage point appeared as plain as any rainy Monday, behaved as though it were she who'd been blessed with the beauty. Fascinated, I allowed her to draw me in for a moment or two.

“A young woman who doesn't want to marry,” I mused, impressing my own design in the dirt at my feet. “There is certain danger in that.”

She laughed and immediately canceled my series of circles with her toe. “And that is the other reason for my pilgrimage,” she said, leaning in closer. “I'm looking for a bit of danger. I imagine you are as well.”

I stooped down to check on my boots. “No, Miss Jenny,” I said, “I'm hoping to evade danger, if I can.” I proceeded to pull on my socks while she chattered on about her trip, and her refusal to be tamed by it as her parents hoped she would be.

I collected my pack and strapped it to my back, hoping to make my intention of continuing on alone apparent to her and the rest. “It's been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Jenny,” I said, bowing again. “I wish you a safe journey and…many dangerous blessings.”

She smiled fiercely. “We will see you again, I hope,” she called out as I made my way to the road. “I hear there's a turbulent river up ahead. I may need you.”

I laughed and waved to her and the others before resuming my travels alone. At the end of the day, I found the
refugio
at the far side of town. I couldn't be sure that the others would join me. It had been a long day's walk and they might have decided to camp along the road rather than risk the night catching up. Even if alone, I looked forward to a glass of wine, and a hearty lamb stew for my dinner. I chose a small table near the window, where I could keep an eye on the road.

I heard them before I saw them, Jenny's laugh above all the clatter as the pilgrims entered the narrow cobblestone road like a flood, filling the spaces with laughter and song and the anticipation of a soft bed and a warm meal. Jenny led the group, like the figurehead of a mighty ship. Her fine clothes were covered in mud, as was her hair, which reminded me of a haystack blown about by a storm and then rained upon relentlessly. But her eyes were alive as she scanned the empty streets in search of the
refugio.

I stood up to get a better look. The group had doubled in size, and I surmised that Tomas and Rosa were likely to be among them. Moments later, the dining hall was filled with pilgrims unloading their packs, inquiring about refreshments, and collapsing into chairs or on the floor when all the seats were taken. I was surrounded by a collective and exuberant fatigue, but still I kept my eyes on the road, not realizing that Jenny had taken the seat next to me and joined me in my vigil, mocking me, it seemed. Rosa and Tomas came into view toward the end of the throng, as I expected, with Doña Gloria limping more than usual. Tomas appeared sullen, and Rosa as stoic as always, her face shimmering and warm about the cheeks, while her eyes remained cool as the darkening sky. I couldn't help appearing a bit spellbound as I gazed upon her.

“She's lovely,” Jenny observed.

Recovering from the startle of unexpected company, I settled down in my chair and came up with a response. “My friends. I…I was concerned they might not make it this far tonight.”

“As concerned as you were,” Jenny said, helping herself to a glass of my wine, “I'm surprised you chose to walk up ahead of them.”

“I prefer to walk alone,” I said, somewhat taken aback by her boldness. At this, Jenny's servants approached and informed her that they'd made arrangements at the best inn in the village.

“I thought I might sleep in the
refugio
with the others tonight,” she replied, and they fell silent, quite obviously surprised.

Tomas and Rosa found their way to us, literally dragging Doña Gloria between them. She groaned on and on about the horrors of the day's walk and the deplorable condition of her blistered feet. I gave her my chair and she collapsed into it, barely interrupting her diatribe of complaints as she did so. Rosa knelt and pulled off her mother's boots and socks to reveal feet as swollen and red as boiled beets. The soles were covered with blisters, some reaching across the entire span of her heel.

Jenny placed a comforting hand on Rosa's shoulder. “I'm afraid she'll have to rest for a couple of days.”

“Do you think so?” Rosa said, but she did not appear disappointed.

“I'm sure of it. Some ointment would do her good as well.” Jenny directed her servant to fetch the ointment, and when she returned, Rosa massaged the foul-smelling grease into her mother's feet while Doña Gloria prayed for the Lord to release her from her misery. She went on and on about the poor sleep she'd been getting and how impossible it was to sleep in the
refugios,
so dank and crowded and full of vermin.

“Then I insist you take my room at the inn, madam,” Jenny said while pouring Doña Gloria a generous glass of wine that she gladly accepted without her usual speech about drinking only on Christmas Day. As far as I could tell, she'd been liberally celebrating the holiday every day since we'd met her.

“That would be lovely—”

“We couldn't take your room, miss,” Rosa responded, interrupting her mother for perhaps the first time in her life. “I'm afraid we can't pay for it and—”

“Nonsense. I've already paid for it, and this poor woman needs a proper night's rest without having to worry about vermin.”

“That's very kind of you,” Rosa said, visibly coloring. “But I assure you we've been very comfortable and”—Rosa looked about the bustling room to make sure no one had heard Jenny's disparaging remark—“my mother is afraid of the rats that sometimes scurry across the floor at night, that is all.”

Jenny rolled her eyes knowingly. “Well, I was referring to the two-legged kind. They can be so much more dangerous,” she added with a wink.

Once Jenny had convinced Rosa to accept her offer, she proceeded to order for the table and insisted that we join her. There were meat pies, fresh vegetables, and the best house wine. For dessert we enjoyed an almond tart, still warm from the oven. All the while Jenny told us of her adventures on the road and topped it all off with the story of how I'd saved her life. She embellished it beyond believable proportions, and had me swimming against the turbulent rush of the river to reach her. I reminded her that the water had barely reached up to my knees.

Upon hearing this, she cocked her head to one side and said to Tomas, “Has your friend always been so humble?”

“Not always,” Tomas answered, “but I must say that modesty suits him.”

By the end of the evening, even Doña Gloria's mood had improved. Rosa was obviously fascinated with Jenny and asked her many questions about her life in America. Jenny answered them, and when faced with the beauty before her, not the slightest trace of the jealousy such as I'd seen in other women was evident in her expression.

At the conclusion of the meal, our stomachs full and our hearts light, Jenny took my arm as we stood in the doorway watching Rosa and her mother walk across the square to the inn. Doña Gloria's limp had improved considerably and she was leaning less heavily on Rosa, while Tomas carried their packs, his head low as if in prayer.

Jenny said, “Your friend has hopelessly lost himself to love. But lucky for him, Rosa is as poor as she is beautiful. I'm sure Doña Gloria is already planning the wedding.”

I stared at her for some time, waiting for the smile to vanish from her face. How could this woman who'd observed the three of us for no more than a few hours dare to be so bold with her theories?

I bowed politely. “I wish you a good night's rest, Miss Jenny. And if I don't see you in the morning, pleasant travels as well.”

“And to you,” she said. “But I'm certain you'll see me.”

T
HE SENSATION OF CASH
in her hands—soft as fine leather, and the fragrance, slightly acrid and earthy—filled her with satisfaction, and made her feel that she was on the verge of transforming her dreams into reality. She imagined how she'd give the money to the doctor who would cure her. After accepting her payment, he'd produce a shiny instrument much like a gun, but with an intricate array of buttons and attachments that hummed pleasantly while emitting a continuous stream of light as though it were harnessing the power of an unseen force as mysterious as the stars. She would undress, and lie facedown on the examining table to wait. Despite her willingness to endure whatever pain necessary, the laser light treatment would prove no more painful than a near scalding bath. The results, however, would be immediate, and she would be given a mirror to see for herself—clear, unblemished skin from the nape of her neck to the bottom of her knees, only slightly red. The kind doctor would inform her that in a matter of days the redness would subside, and then it would be perfect.

Jamilet sighed as she placed the nearly two thousand dollars she'd saved back into the shoe box. Then she reached around to trace her fingers along the thick ridge of skin on her shoulders, easily discernible beneath the thin cotton of her blouse. She un-tucked her blouse at the waist and traced her fingers along her lower back, simulating the caress of a lover. Once she was free of the mark, this would be the most sensuous place for Eddie to begin his appeal, at the base of her spine, or the back of her neck. If he were as tender and romantic as she suspected, this was where their lovemaking would begin.

The front door opened then slammed shut. This was followed by the hollow sound of shoes kicked off and hitting the floor one after the other. Carmen wasn't due home for another couple of hours, and immediately Jamilet sensed that something was wrong. She hastily tucked in her blouse and ventured out into the living room. There she found Carmen collapsed on the couch, arms and legs spread out as though waiting to be executed. She hadn't even bothered to go to the refrigerator for her first beer of the afternoon. Never had she forgone this part of her routine. Often, she forgot to pull the plug after a bath, or put out the garbage on garbage day, but she never forgot her first beer of the afternoon.

Jamilet went to the refrigerator herself and placed a cold beer in the center of the coffee table. She waited a moment, but when her aunt didn't move, she popped open the tab as well, and placed it back on the table, an inch or two closer than she had before. But Carmen's eyes were glazed over as she relentlessly bit at her bottom lip. She didn't even seem to know that her niece was there.

“Your beer's there, Tía,” Jamilet said.

Carmen responded with a weak grunt, but she didn't move a muscle.

“What's wrong, Tía?”

Her eyes cleared slightly, and it seemed as though she might speak when suddenly she thrust out her hand and grabbed the beer like a lioness striking at prey. She downed it in record time, and allowed the empty can to fall out of her hand and roll off the couch and onto the floor.

“Why did you come home early?” Jamilet asked, fighting the impulse to attend to the can right away.

Carmen's bottom lip started to quiver. “Why should I work all day when my life is over?”

“Did something happen with Louis?”

She nodded and plunged her head deep into the pillow next to her. Her body began to heave with violent sobs. Jamilet rushed to the bathroom, and returned with several yards of toilet paper that she placed near her aunt's closed fist. Carmen's fingers slowly opened and then closed around the enormous wad. She proceeded to wipe at her nose and eyes with the desperation of one trying to rid the carpet of a stubborn stain. Feeling more composed, she sat up, her face red and bloated. “It doesn't matter what happened. It's over,” she said flatly.

“Things always work themselves out between you two, Tía, you know that.”

“This time it's different.”

“Why?”

Carmen's eyes twisted in their sockets. “Because the old lady didn't have the sense to die in Mexico like she should have. She tried to use her friend's papers to get back across the border. Any idiot knows you have to memorize birth dates and shit if you're gonna fool them, but the senile bitch got so nervous, she forgot everything. She couldn't even remember her friend's name when they asked her.”

“That's too bad,” Jamilet said, knowing that such an event would have resulted in detainment at the border, but she wasn't sure how this affected Carmen and Louis.

Carmen stuffed the pillow under her chin and hugged it tight, like a child hugging her teddy bear. “He came by work, when I was finishing my route, and told me he couldn't see me this weekend and maybe never again 'cause he feels so upset and guilty about his wife and daughters being in jail. He started to slobber and say all this stupid shit to me, so I told him, ‘Hey, do I look like a fucking priest to you?' You should've seen the look on his face, it was sickening.”

“Did you really say that?”

Carmen's eyes widened for an instant. “Do you think it was mean?”

Jamilet nodded, and Carmen threw the pillow she clutched across the room with all her strength. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? You tell me, if you're so fucking smart.” Her eyes accosted Jamilet, with fear on the verge of something unfamiliar, but expectant—some semblance of hope.

Jamilet bent down for the empty beer can. “I don't know, Tía,” she said. “Maybe we should wait and see what happens.”

Carmen exhaled, and her chin dropped to her chest. “We can wait until my hair turns white, but it won't change a thing. It's over.”

 

The call from the police came while Jamilet was getting dinner in the oven—chicken enchiladas that she hoped would brighten her aunt's mood. She still held the oven mitt as the officer explained that, while Carmen was being released under her own recognizance, she was in no condition to drive home and someone should come for her. Jamilet ran the entire four blocks to the station without stopping, and found her aunt sprawled on a wooden bench, her purse and its contents spilled out on the floor, near her feet. The officer behind the window handed Jamilet Carmen's car keys and driver's license while Carmen glared at her niece as if she were somehow responsible for her predicament.

They walked the first couple of blocks in silence. Jamilet was anxious to hear her aunt's version of the story, although the officer who called had already told her some of what had happened. The police were called to break up a fight at Chabelito's Bar. When they arrived they found Carmen with another woman's head in the crook of her arm. All the witnesses reported that Carmen threw the first punch, although she'd had to endure plenty of verbal abuse before she did. “If she'd backed off when we got there,” the officer explained on the phone, “we might've let her go right then and there. But it took two of us to restrain her.”

With black hair exploding from her skull, and one broken heel causing her to limp, they attracted quite a few stares as they made their way down the street, but Carmen didn't notice. She kept her gaze focused on the sidewalk, leaning on Jamilet once or twice when she felt unsteady on her bilevel heels. She mumbled something.

“What did you say, Tía?”

“I said,” she repeated in a grizzly voice, “she should've known better than to bring up Louis.”

“Is that what made you mad?”

Carmen turned to glare at her niece for a second time, and stumbled in the process. “Wouldn't you be mad if someone told you that your man had another girlfriend?”

Jamilet was silent.

“The bitch,” Carmen muttered. “I know it's not true. I have my spies, and they say he hasn't left the house to do anything but go to work. She just said that to make me mad.”

“Well, I guess it worked,” Jamilet said, and she even managed to chuckle, but the tension didn't lighten and she felt ridiculous for trying.

“I never been to jail before, Jami,” Carmen said, her voice soft with revelation. “You probably don't believe me, but it's true.”

“I believe you, Tía.”

“I just kept drinking and trying to swallow all this shit I feel inside, but it got worse. This time my anger swallowed me up instead of the other way around.”

“I worry about you, Tía.”

“Well, here's something else for you to worry about. I'm going to have to go to court in a few weeks and the judge might decide to send me to jail for a long time, maybe a couple of years.”

They walked another half block in silence. “I don't know what I'm going to do, Jami,” Carmen said. “Now it feels like my life is really over. Even if Louis came back to me, I don't think it would help.”

Jamilet took hold of her aunt's arm to steady her, and Carmen began to weep softly. “I feel like a piece of shit,” she said, tears running into her mouth. “No, shit is too good for me, too real…you can still see it and touch it. I'm more like a fart, a big silent killer of a fart, a smelly ghost.”

“Let's get home,” Jamilet said, straining under the weight of her aunt's misery. “You'll feel better after you get some rest.”

“Yeah, let's go home,” she said. “I want to sleep and never wake up.”

 

Although Jamilet had never cared for the taste of coffee, by the time she finished her first cup, she had definitely changed her mind. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that Señor Peregrino had prepared it for her himself, while muttering that he was certain she'd prefer hers with plenty of cream and sugar, as most children do, and that it didn't do for a person from the Hispanias to dislike coffee, when it could easily be considered one of their greatest contributions to the whole of civilization. “It clears the mind and strengthens the constitution,” he declared. “People who don't drink coffee are weak and feeble-minded; they usually don't have opinions about anything, but if they do, they're afraid to formulate them into words and speak out.”

Jamilet accepted a second cup, shaken somewhat by the fact that he was doing the serving, but she continued to relate the events of the previous evening just the same. Until three in the morning she'd been attending to her aunt, who was so despondent after her arrest that she threatened to go to the First Street Bridge in her pajamas and jump into the L.A. River. When she wasn't contemplating the various ways she might end her life, she wept over the misery of her loneliness, and the humiliation of having been raised with the beautiful and perfect Lorena. “I know Mama wished I had died instead of her,” she'd wailed. Jamilet had attempted to sooth her aunt's agony with herbal teas and sensible talk, but she was overwhelmed beyond her capacity to understand and do anything but acknowledge the enormity of her pain.

Although moved by Carmen's piteous condition, Señor Peregrino was far more concerned with Jamilet's obvious fatigue. “It's a love affair that's doomed to fail,” he said. “And I don't think you should lose another night's sleep over it; there's only so much coffee a person can drink.” Nevertheless, he proceeded to talk more about the wonders of caffeine. That civilization undoubtedly owed many of its achievements to the stir it created in the veins, and that the Old World was indebted to the New World for its discovery and transmission. He suggested that perhaps the coffee her aunt was drinking wasn't strong enough.

“She seems to like it,” Jamilet said. “She drinks three cups, one right after the other, and doesn't bother with cream and sugar.” She took a small sip while peeking up at him. “Besides, Tía Carmen has no problem speaking her mind, Señor.”

When she was finished, she proceeded to organize his breakfast tray, and thanked him for the coffee.

“You may leave that for later,” he said. “I wish to continue my story.” And his eyes grew misty with the strain of remembering.

Jamilet sat on the edge of her chair. “Señor, you were—”

His hand shot up. “Hush for a moment. I can't hear myself think.” He closed his eyes, as though to shut out everything that might interfere with his remembering, but still there was no indication that the story was about to resume. He opened his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Where did I leave off?”

Jamilet was so eager to answer that her chair scraped across the floor. “Jenny told you that Rosa was as beautiful as she was poor, and that Doña Gloria was planning the wedding.” She hesitated for a moment. “You were upset with Jenny, even though she let Rosa and her mother have her room at the inn.”

“That's true. I've never known anyone with so much talent for upsetting me.” He set his coffee cup aside and began.

 

Doña Gloria awoke with her feet so enflamed that she was unable to get out of bed for breakfast. Rosa was distraught and asked us to join her at her mother's bedside so that we could help her decide what to do. Jenny came along, saying that she had experience with home remedies because her childhood nanny had a gift for healing and had taught her everything she knew. She chattered on with fantastic self-glorifying tales as we made our way to the inn.