The Moths and Other Stories (10 page)

Son? Have you arrived or is it that you have yet to leave? Sprout your ear and listen to the carousel music bounce like bubbles in the air. Circle, turn, whirl and whirlpool dizzy with sticky hairs was my birth, but now the pool is a vacuum—my legs dangle, my fingers tire of gripping the edge. The veins in my arms escape as thick hospital tubes. Child?

Chato?

My son?

Your wife.

Go to hell, Chato.

Let me be.

Do you know what it is like to die, my husband?

I died long before you were buried, woman.

Then we die differently, you and I?

What do you want of me? You have already destroyed what I loved more than you.

And you, Chato?

I killed for honor.

Then I killed for life. It's the same thing, isn't it? Which is worse? You killed because something said: ‘you must kill to remain a man—and not for this honor. For me, things are as different as our bodies. I killed, as you say, because it would have been unbearable to watch a child slowly rot. But you couldn't understand that because something said ‘you must have sons to remain a man.'

Amanda. I am poor. This earth bore me to live, to have children, to die, and it is not for me to change it. But you, you changed it and closed the door to my sunlight. Now, I die with pain knowing that all I will have left as a sign of my life is a stonemark without a name. I die alone.

The bells of music stab the temples of his head and he feels the gravel, rough like sandpaper on his cheek. Chato has fallen off the crate. He feels footsteps around him, muffled voices and he opens his eyes to see them hovering like shadows of birds, and he faintly hears his bones clattering as they lift him. A dead fly is impressed on his cheek and a hand wipes it away. The blanket is cold; he knows they have taken his trousers off. He will die alone.

Touch my hand, Chato. Forgive and die with me.

Chato sees himself get off his horse and grab a handful of land. Grainy dust. Home. The priest had told him to save every penny. Land is valuable, and you can at least grow a livelihood for you and your family. It is a hope, Chato remembers the priest saying. And he did save every penny except for the gifts he bought Amanda. The carousel, so expensive. That day he tells Amanda of the land he has not seen yet. This is the first time he has spoken to his wife in a long, long time, and he sees her surprise when he mentions the name
Joaquín. Or perhaps she is surprised about the land. Chato sees himself, excited—trying to hide the excitement, and for a moment he feels like touching her, his wife. Perhaps, after he builds the house they will begin another life together. Before, Amanda would touch him and try to make him love her again. Each time she touched him, he saw his child's face, and would jerk away from her grasp. He remembers even crying once, behind the house in the dark. Perhaps later, but now he has promised himself and he walks away, his spurs loud on the wooden porch. Grainy dust. He sees Don Joaquín approaching, his horse trotting confidently.

You acted like God, Amanda. I acted like a man should.

“Chato! How do you like the land? Practically given to you! Look, just to the south of here, you can set up irrigation ditches and…”

“It's desert.”

“Excuse my laughter, but what did you expect for the few pennies you've given me?”

“I've given you everything I'm worth…without being castrated.”

“And I've given you what you're worth, my friend. Desert!”

Chato sees himself surrounded by people who thicken like nervous ants as he brings Don Joaquín in. Mouths first murmur sentences, now shout words, while the cool bursts of breeze gently dry the drooling saliva from the dying man. The voices follow them to Chato's porch. After the doctor leaves, Amanda Márquez prays near Don Joaquín. Chato has surrendered his bed and his wife to this man, and he sits quietly on a crate viewing the mountains from the next room. He turns to his wife, who holds a heavy rosary, then returns to the mountains, where into a blissful sleep he can see his heart smiling.

He remembers his heart smiling.

He remembers his mother's crumbling voice calling for him: “Chato.” The word with no emphasis, just an empty “Chato” almost cursed, her son the runt boy who learned to hoe the land at three and could sing passionate corridos about men impoverished by love, men scorned or continuously intoxicated, like the clown who was the proprietor of the yearly event in the village, the carousel with its bells and rings enticing all the filthy children to steal, beg, hunt for centavos
to hop on the painted wooden horses going nowhere but making little ragged puffed-cheeked children cheer and laugh for three minutes like they were kings, landowners, savoring every morsel of the carousel's delight, proud of their majestic selves for three minutes until the carousel slowed to a stop and then the children cherished the memory beneath their fast-pacing hearts…hungrier.

And “Chato” was the soft breath of Amanda Márquez at the tender age of fourteen whispering penetration, and the moon was her first gift to him, gleaming raw that night when he presented himself to her family, telling them that his love would make up for her lack of it, and hearing her father laugh at him with a laugh that comes from deep inside saying “She's a jewel,” grabbing her by the arm and laughing out loud knowing how ugly she was, but only to her family because Chato loved her so much that he bought her a small carousel to keep in the new house he would build for her, and he also promised her father (while she looked on in amazement at the carousel he held in one hand and the two red apples he held in the other) that he, Chato, would be as virile as the land he would buy. But all her father did was laugh at him, his virility, his dream, with a laugh that locked itself somewhere inside Chato; laughed that same, heavy boisterous laugh Don Joaquín laughed just before he, Chato, struck him with a knife, cutting him like butter. He was so soft, this man whom Amanda hated for no reason at all except she kept saying to the dying man, you told him, you told him, and Chato watched her as she prayed for him, and when she lifted herself up from kneeling, he watched her float into the next room where he, Chato, sat, going outside with an empty jar to where the heat had transformed the garbage into tireless maggots. And Chato wanted to stop her, wanted to ask Why are you doing this, watching her come inside the house, like an apparition, going over to where Don Joaquín was breathing heavily, and with her filthy hands Chato watched her force open the newly mended wound and he can almost hear the delicate tearing of each stitch plucking one by one, seeing her, his wife, Amanda, crazy with hate, put the bigger worms in his body to let him rot before his death, watching her replace the gauze neatly, then kneeling to pray once again for this man Don Joaquín, and the carousel is quiet in his heart.

“The cock will pluck the hen tonight.”

“Ah, Chato, my friend, how many sons will you sire? Five? Six? Can you even father one, you son of a bitch!”

“She is big-hipped. She will carry many children.”

“Always stand up. That way you won't get pregnant. Look at me, only seven!!”

“Full-moon children are born with horns.”

“Let's see you kiss the bride.”

“…then I took off my pants and I told her, ‘Now you put them on,' and she did. Then I said, ‘See! The pants fit me, not you. Don't forget that it's me who wears them…'”

Only with an escaping nervous laugh did she open her mouth to reveal slightly enlarged gums. And Amanda was nervous. And excited. And frightened by the new arrangement, this idea of marriage. Her family called her wild, like the jackrabbits, timid, not strong, but strong-willed, and none expected her to marry. But married she was to a stranger nearly twice her age.

In one breath she drifted from the priest, with his matrimonial rosary chains linking them together until death, to the reception where the neighborhood men with their ribboned guitars played music that jumped with dance steps and where she smeared her dress with chile, to finally her husband's crusty rooms.

The rooms were humid until she started the fire. With a stove, table, two chairs, shelves and the bed she sat on, it was a house not yet a home and her duty was made clear by the light of the fire burning. Amanda heard the hoofs of his horse, then the creak from the saddle seating a man heavy with drink. She heard his spurs reach the wooden porch; an unsteady pace. The pace receded and became cushioned with distance as he reached the end of the porch, louder as he approached the door, then receded again. Finally, the pacing stopped and she heard him strike a match, imagining him lighting his cigar. She jumped from the bed when the door swung open. He stood there, immobile. To the back of him lay the dry, cold flatlands, thin with hunger. In front of him stood Amanda, frightened, pure, her skin brown and rich like the fertile soil, like the fruitful earth should be, his heartland, only hope, now his wife, amidst the warmth of the fire.

His hand was like ice on her budding breasts, and he pinched her nipples gently. Amanda was terrified. Unable to move, mesmerized by the sensation of his fingers, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine death. The pain was too great, her mother said, she must bear it, clench your teeth, children are made by pain, her mother said, children are born by pain, but she felt the softness of lips touch the sides of her body, as soft as a cat's walk. That night he said her name a thousand times without sounds, probing her until his fingers were lost somewhere in maiden hair. The storm came as a surprise, the tropical rainfall between her legs, then he came hard and wet, with a grunt close to her ear.

Amanda lay there thinking of the moistness, the itch. He finally turned away to sleep, and she thought, so this is love, reaching down to contact her undiscovered island which Chato had just claimed as his own. She brought her moistened fingers up to her nose. So this, she thought, was the smell of love. Raising the same hand up to the moonlight, she spotted red fingers. The moon was red. She woke Chato.

“Chato,” she said, “I'm no longer a child. Look.” She held her hand for him to see.

“You're still a child,” he said, “but one that can bear children.”

God didn't listen to me, and neither did you, Chato. You are as guilty as I am.

“Anita, the young couple, they have been married for three months with no word of children.”

“Comadre, the first three months of a child are quiet ones. She is probably on her fourth month now.”

“If that is so, Anita, then tell me why she is visiting Don Serafín, God help him? She is dry, that's why! What sadness. So young, so useless.”

“What's this? Visits with the devil himself? May God in heaven save us all. When did you hear of this?”

“I…well…the curtains are thin in the confessional booths.”

“God save us, you heard Amanda's sins, Comadre?”

“How could I help it, Anita, I was next in line?”

“May God forgive you for listening. What did the jackrabbit say? Comes to Church only when she needs God's help.”

“Only this: something about problems, something about corn-silk tea, something about Don Serafín. Then, Señora
Ramírez enters carrying her youngest, and for no reason the child begins screaming like a soul in hell. I couldn't hear another word.”

“So young, so useless. And to think your daughter would have been just right for Chato.”

“So young. But she doesn't have half the problems Señora Ramírez has, you know, married to a drunk and all…”

Amanda saw the two women cackling on the front steps of the church. She had lit two candles for the Holy Virgin and she came out just in time to see the two stop and stare at her. She bowed out of custom to them and began her half-mile walk towards her house, hoping to get there before the deep dark. She walked quickly, recognizing the different houses and paths. When she passed the great white house, she saw Don Joaquín sitting on the porch with bare feet. Were he not living alone at the time, the barking of the dogs would have awakened the household. He saw her small image and waved for her to come in. Amanda, wrapped in her rebozo, quickly walked away, disappearing like the dreams he often had of her. As he lay down, Don Joaquín promised himself he would have to see her again.

She remembered. It is so hard being female, Amanda, and you must understand that that is the way it was meant to be,
said the priest in the confessional
. But this is pain, Father, to sprout a child that we can't feed or care for. Pray, pray, pray,
said the priest
, but what is a poor Amanda to do? The moon has hidden its face many times and I still have yet to bleed. Dried orange peels, and even corn-silk tea, will stir the blood to flow,
said Don Serafín
. Each morning I wait. Just drink the tea, drink it.

Each morning is drearier than the last. To awake and feel something inside draining you. Lying on my back, I can almost see where all my energy is going, below my navel, where my hair stops. It will be soon,
he said
. I stroke it to calm its hunger, but it won't be satisfied until it gets all of me. Then he wants me. Amanda, Amanda, I love to hold you, to love you,
said Chato
. He likes mornings. I lie there rubbing my belly while he kneads my breasts. I know what he wants and I hide the sickness from him. But Father, wasn't He supposed to take care of us, His poor? When you lie together, it is for creating children,
said the priest
. You have sinned, pray. Sex is the only free pleasure we have. It makes us feel like
clouds for the minutes that not even you can prevent. You ask us not to lie together, but we are not made of you, we are not gods. You, God, eating and drinking as you like, you, there, not feeling the sweat or the pests that feed on the skin, you sitting with a kingly lust for comfort, tell us that we will be paid later on in death. Amanda, Amanda, I love you,
said Chato
. Listen to me, condemn me to hell, to this life, to anything, but please, please, let me not be pregnant. It will be soon.