The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (37 page)

“
Bueno para nada,
” came a murmur from a bearded clenched jaw.

“
Pero se te cae la baba, ¿verdad? Ya quisieras tú tener lo que él tuvo
,” was the response from another tight mouth.

On the other hand the women … ah, the women, theirs was another story, because what memories were harbored deep within those hearts! That night the town's females encircled the body like a ring of black crows, each woman believing that she had been the one and only of the dead man's loves.
Concha's husband had been that way; he had the gift, the knack, the magic, because no matter if the woman were young or middle-aged, he had only to look into her eyes, and inexplicably she began to sigh and purr like a cat ready to mate. The truth was that in that bleak town there were hardly any virgins left because Concha's husband had lain with just about every eligible woman and girl. Fat and fragile, young and unmarried, old and married, with many children even, Concha's husband had been a
chingón
; he had enjoyed them all.

Most prominent of the weeping circle that surrounded the dead body was the matron with heavy breasts, the one who now wept inconsolably and who was nearly twenty years older than Concha's husband. He had one day surprised her behind the chicken coop, but he had only to place his warm hands on her drooping breasts before she hung out her tongue and said, “
Sí, sí.
” What happened next was so sinful and lecherous that if her old baker of a husband ever suspected even the half of it, he most surely would roast her in one of his ovens. But ah, even now the heavy-breasted older woman still felt herself go wet just looking down at the dead body of Concha's husband.

Next to the matron stood the beautiful young daughter of the mayor, and anyone could see that she was barely this side of being a child. What a plum she would have been for the young man standing beside her who even now was looking forward to a life of respectability and reasonable success in that town of small men shackled to miserable patches of stony earth. What a prize that young, convent-bred girl would have been to any man. But no, unknown to that ambitious young man, Concha's husband had robbed him of such a liberation from the doldrums of wretchedness, because that young man was destined soon to discover on the night of his marriage that his beautiful young wife was incomplete, that he had received a damaged package, that the goods were tainted, and he would be laughed at, scoffed and mocked. Pitiful, ambitious young man. The worst was that as he stared down at the body of Concha's husband, that young man did not yet realize that he, just like the rest of the men in the room, had been plundered and that the thief was Concha's husband.

It should be told that it happened to the mayor's daughter as it always happens to the innocent—unknowingly. It came on a Sunday morning when she had left the church after mass and had stopped to gaze at the beautiful flowers that were being offered to her by an old Indian woman, flowers that were a perfect buy for the day. All of a sudden, out of nowhere one hand extended the coins to the
vieja
, while the other offered the flowers to the mayor's young daughter. When she looked up she saw bright buckteeth and a smile so different, so enticing that she had no other alternative but to accept the flowers.

The next thing she knew they were behind the church's sacristy, back there where no one ever goes, and she was allowing Concha's husband to lift her skirt. The nuns in her school had forever admonished against such a thing, but there was nothing the mayor's daughter could do to stop what was happening. When it first began, pain shattered her virgin's body, but it was nothing compared to the delight that followed, and the mayor's daughter loved what was happening. She loved this man with long teeth, and while she was feeling all that pleasure, she thought that the poor convent sisters had been wrong, misinformed and cheated.

Standing very close to the mayor's daughter within the weeping circle was the Indian girl from no one-knew-where. However, it was known in the town that the girl had several brothers, rough, taciturn, knife-carrying Indios who kept a close account of their sister's goings and comings. She was Concha's maid, because even though the house was small there were four boys for whom Concha had to care, the meals to prepare, the clothes to wash in the river, and so many other chores to which attention had to be given. Yes, a maid was necessary just for those demands. But there was yet another important reason for a maid in Concha's house; her husband was an inspector for the tequila distillery in the capital city, and in that town of plain men of hardened, calloused hands, a man of stature such as Concha's husband, of course, had to have a maid in his house.

It had happened with the Indian girl just as it had with the others: unexpectedly, quickly. One day she was making the tortillas for the noon meal when she suddenly felt a warm breath on the back of her neck, and when she turned her head to see what it was, there was Concha's husband with his alluring front teeth shining in the kitchen's gloom. He whispered something into her ear, and slowly, as if welded together, they edged towards one of the darker corners of the dingy kitchen. Then it happened, right there on the chilly tile floor, and the Indian girl had never felt so much pleasure in her life, even though she was remembering all the while that the tortillas were burning.

So it was that those women, old and young alike, stood around the dead body of Concha's husband, each one remembering, each one wishing that it could happen again. It had been worth it all, they thought, even for those who had been unmarried and unable to explain from where the child—for there were many children—had come. In truth, it was impossible to tell just how many of the children that crowded the church's schoolroom were unknowingly brothers and sisters. All anyone knew was that the children were orphans if their mother was unmarried, or if the mother was married, that its father was a man to whom the child bore no resemblance at all. What those countless children could not know because they were as yet innocent and ignorant, was that they all looked uncannily alike, and that they in turn all looked like Concha's husband. It had to be admitted even by the town's
Doubting Thomases; most of the children—girls and boys—had the same face, which gleamed with the well-known overhanging front teeth.

And if the women were as yet yearning for Concha's husband even now at his
velorio
, the men, as it is already known, were a different tale because most of them, if not all of them, hated the now dead man. Indeed, they had reason to feel nothing less than loathing for Concha's husband because had he not truly cheated them of their honor? Had not Concha's husband deprived each man of his claim to be the one and only macho of the town? Every one of those men had taken pride in the women he had conquered, the many girls he had seduced. Each one at one time or another had boasted to the other men of the town, “
Quítate, que aquí viene mi gallo.
” But for those bitter men the unforgivable truth was that it had been Concha's husband who had made them all look like pale little girls at a First Communion ceremony. It had been he who had run off with the coveted prize of being number one with the women of the town. Most degrading to those coarse men was that for them the man now laid out dead on the cold kitchen table had been nothing less than a disgusting office worker. Those men who were creatures of the land, tough and weathered, proud of their ability to take pain, of their capacity to get drunk and sing all night long with the mariachi, and to rule in their home as proud as fighting cocks—they had been made to look tame by that buck-toothed
catrín
whose nails and hands looked more like those of a woman than of a real man.

Concha's husband had enemies, many enemies, who wanted him dead and who now looked about curiously wondering who had been the real
valiente
who had pulled the trigger on the good-for-nothing. Those cuckolded husbands, those duped young men who had dreamed that they would be the first to gain entrance into that beautiful young thing, those dishonored fathers and brothers, all hated Concha's husband—and envied him. But they begrudged the hidden hand that had killed the lecherous dog even more; that unknown someone who had blown out his brains with a Remington revolver and set all the women to weeping, and the men to thanking God for taking the prowler off the streets of their town forevermore.

In that humid, impoverished Jalisco town, no night had ever been as the night of the
velorio
of Concha's husband. In the dim light of the smoking kerosene lamp the features of the old baker, of the owner of the
tiendita
, of the town's only mail clerk, and of all the other men who daily broke their back in a futile attempt to clear a wretched crag of earth so as to plant
maíz
or
frijol
, all those faces looked like yellow, hardened Indian masks rather than faces of flesh. Their eyes were slits, sharp slanted gashes as in the faces of ancient oriental nomadic peoples whose taut bronze skin clung to faces marked by high cheekbones and wide, tight lips that betrayed an ancestral demand to be avenged.

Every one of those men had desired the death of Concha's husband with all the energy and strength of his heart. Each could have been the one to rid that town of its scourge, but only one of them had been macho enough to pull the trigger. Each man knew it, and inwardly hated himself for not being the one destined to bring tranquility to this town of black-shawled weeping women.

As for Concha, time seemed to reverse itself, transporting her back to her early youth. She was at that moment remembering when she had first met her husband. No, he had not been handsome in the sense that most people think of the word but there had been something about him that had captivated her; it could have been the way he walked and carried himself, or perhaps the manner in which he looked into her eyes. Now that Concha was reminiscing, she was almost certain that it was her husband's smile, a mouth filled with teeth, that had most fascinated her.

Concha's husband had entered her life when she was barely fifteen years of age. He hadn't been much older; perhaps five or six years beyond Concha's age. But even then he already had a reputation for his womanizing, and it had been Concha's father that had admonished her against any relationship with such a type. But Concha's father's words were useless because by the time they were uttered it was too late. Not that anyone should think that Concha had done anything wrong or had been intimate or any such thing, but rather that she was by then in love beyond words with that young man. She was, as she at the time told her confessor in church, dying of love.

So Concha's husband was married. It must be said that when he married Concha he did so for the first time, because by the time his brains were blown out years later, the record incontestably proved that he had married several women after Concha—without the benefit of divorce—because Concha's husband, among other things, had also been a bigamist.

During those first years after her marriage, Concha had been happy with her husband. She liked the way he showered her with affection and attention, and the way in which he sweetly addressed her as “
mi reina.
” In the beginning Concha felt confident that her father most certainly had been wrong in rebuking her husband, who brought her fresh-cut flowers daily and constantly smiled his charming smile. Yes, Concha had been very happy for that first brief period.

But then it happened. Concha got pregnant, and very soon she began to puff up and to wobble about in a most ungainly manner. It was at that time that her husband one day failed to come home; he neither left a note nor took a stitch of clothing with him. Besides being shocked beyond words Concha was devastated, as it can be imagined, especially when she was told by the town's gossip mongers that her husband had run away with don Lencho's wife. Don Lencho was the proprietor of the only
cantina
, and to make things worse those same wagging tongues informed Concha that don Lencho's wife
had not been loose, but rather a model of virtue up until the time she saw the well-known grin of overhanging front teeth aimed at her. After that the tavern keeper's wife seemed to be paralyzed, as if she had been stung by a poisonous scorpion. When those same tell-tales saw the woman leave on the morning milk wagon, they saw that she was enraptured with love as she was held tightly in the arms of Concha's husband.

So Concha had no other alternative but to return to her father's home, where she was given a sermon sternly warning her against the weaknesses of her sex and the many temptations that come to a married woman who is alone. She stayed with her father as she awaited the birth of her child, which came shortly thereafter. Concha gave birth to a fat little boy who in time looked just like his father.

Thus did the years pass for Concha. One day when her boy was three years of age, and while she was buying tamales at the town bakery, Concha was suddenly shocked by the force of two male arms which enveloped her from behind, wrapping themselves around her waist like two mighty ropes. When she was able to wiggle around to face her attacker, her heart knew no end to its joy when she realized that it was her husband. Concha's husband had returned and she would no longer be alone in her valley of tears. She opened her arms and her whole being to her husband and, since don Lencho had quietly slipped out of town several years before, there was no one to even ask as to the whereabouts of the love-smitten
cantina
keeper's wife.

Concha once again set up house with her smiling, affectionate husband and boy, resuming the serene life they had led before she had been struck by pregnancy for the first time. But how true is the saying that we're born to weep and moan in this wicked world, because Concha's happiness was shortlived and her cross once more became an intolerable burden to bear when she again found herself to be with child. When her body once more became puffy and bloated, yes, Concha's husband again disappeared, this time with one of the nuns that taught the town's girls how to sew and stitch baby clothing. Concha wept many bitter tears because she desperately missed her husband's hypnotic smile and his tender caresses.