The Royal Family (37 page)

And Dan Smooth, what magic did the Queen work, to tame him on their first meeting?

I want eyes as blue as ocean water, he’d whispered. I want to drink the sea and be young again, like a . . . like a dancing little ocean flower . . .

Are you my little boy? said the Queen, instantly apprehending what he needed. Oh me oh my, Danny, you’re my little honeychild.

After that, Smooth always loved her.

And the tall man, where he came from nobody knew. It was rumored that he’d once been the Queen’s lover, but another tale went that he’d been her pimp until she got her power and converted him into pilgrim, worshiper, and server. What had he been? Even he himself hardly recollected now. His memories of himself scarcely resembled anything which he could recognize, and he didn’t want to remember things anyhow. (Perhaps he’d been one of ever so many black men who sat on the sidewalk glaring into space.) Sentry sleeper before the tent of a prophetess, he wandered a desert partly of his own making, sometimes gaming and smiling, sometimes repelling jackal conspiracies. He leaned and meditated. He confirmed himself with his own courage. He almost never lied. He spoke or he didn’t speak. He deflected, threatened, raved, or again confirmed. To the Queen he was her wall, her flashlight, her pistol, her binoculars. He hunted the Tenderloin streets to cop the cheapest weed, the best uncut china white, the raciest speed, the highest grade ice, the purest white girl so delicious in the crack pipe, the most vicious angel dust. He waited and lived on, a fabulous, enigmatic figure who kept his own counsel and the Queen’s, cipher by choice, half-man, superman, faithful searcher, merciless gleaner. Above them all he was as an iron roof.

The tale of Beatrice, of sweetnatured Beatrice who very rapidly chewed gum with her black black teeth as she swayed herself down the curbside of life, illustrates above all else that wherever Queen Destiny marches in her lethally imperial purple, free will must fall down naked and trembling in every grovelling ritual of hopelessly humiliating
abasement suffered not merely by the bitter-comprehending brain alone, not only by the heart which would be proud, but even by the entrails, for free will, stripped bare, must squat down exposing its haunches, to be kissed, whipped, or raped as sparkling Queen Destiny may please. But an uncomprehending child such as Sapphire, or a religious prostitute such as Beatrice herself, may both submit to the purple one without harm, the former because where there exists only sensation without interpretation or memory there can be no permanent emotional wound, the latter because acceptance of rape may truly for sacred natures become willed sacrifice.

Beatrice was a fullbooded Mixteca from Oaxaca, in a village where beyond a fence made of scrap wood, the canyon continued down toward unknown places where they said that puppets well-made enough came to life and ran away from their makers, hiding amidst the lizards, vagabonds, and beautiful turquoise skeletons. Sometimes at night Beatrice heard a strange humming from that direction, and was afraid. In her house the ladders made A-shaped shadows on concrete. A toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste were wedged into the top of the doorframe. Beatrice’s family shared that toothbrush, because they were all one blood. Her Papa’s revolver lay on the concrete. He needed it to protect them. But most of the time he was gone, and the children were forbidden to touch it, so if any animated puppets had come to haunt them what could they have done? After Beatrice had gotten fat and given birth to her own child, she would have liked to inquire of her Papa regarding this point, but by then, as with most wisdom, the motive arrived too late for application. Besides, the puppets never came, so her Papa must have known what he was doing. Beatrice remembered when he used to play with her; now he worked so hard and came home worried and tired. As for her Mama, she’d died of jealousy two years ago, so nobody baked a cake for Beatrice’s name day anymore. But her Papa continued to love her; he always gave her a present on the Day of the Three Kings.

I think I get crazy staying here, doing practically nothing, she said to her friend Juanita.

Can you read and write? asked Juanita with a loving glance.

Can you?

I asked you first.

Somebody was teaching me, but I forgot. See, I don’t have such a good memory, Beatrice smilingly said.

Spades, picks, shovels, and empty bottles inhabited the dirt.

Well, then, you must try for
special
work, Juanita said, and Beatrice did not know what she meant.

Beatrice was not grey then and never imagined that she could be. Nor was her smile anything but white. Her black shiny hair parted itself on either side of her shiny face, which was made more vivid still by her ever-smiling teeth and the whites of her flashing eyes. She would have liked to wear black miniskirts with the slenderest shoulderstraps because she so often felt hot, but then her Papa, who’d beaten her only twice, would have knocked her teeth out. Fortunately he never suspected that she had any such desires because as her figure continued to ripen (she was fourteen), the girl took to attending church more and more, praying to the Virgin for happiness. Every time she got a few centavos, she’d go light a votive candle, and nobody ever asked what she prayed for. In the cornfield she was a hard and cheerful worker. Her skin became the color of caramelized sugar, and she dyed her hair two or three shades blonder than that.

Juanita was thinking. Beatrice waited. But because she could never wait very long, and because she wanted to make sure that Juanita thought the right things, she winked at her friend and said: You know what? I was gonna do the craziest thing in my life about a week ago. I was gonna go away from here.

Me too, said Juanita. I feel that way too sometimes. But my Papa would never let me.

My dad, he’s mean, too. Because my dad, always when he’s mean, he gets mad at me.

The chickens laughed hysterically.

Juanita leaned forward and whispered something into Beatrice’s ear, and Beatrice’s eyes widened and she laughed.

Well?

I would be very happy, said Beatrice, even though she was afraid.

Well then.

But, you know, I have a
novio
now, too, Juanita. And my father-in-law and mother-in-law, they order me. I like to do a lot of things, but they don’t let me. If I ask them, they say, you’re crazy. I don’t think they will let me go.

Even once a week? said Juanita.

If it’s once a week I think I could.

I saw you that time, when my sister-in-law got married. You were dancing! You embarrassed?

Red chickens and black chickens ran by in the sun, shaded under the planks of the roof.

I would be very happy, Beatrice said again.

Green trees and blue sky clothed her village. Her laundry bag hung beside her, red and purple and black. A brown spider crawled slowly up the wall. The village smelled like pigs and chickens.

Juanita was dead now, from a shameful disease.

Beatrice wanted to remain a good girl loved by the Virgin, so, continuing innocent of the urine-and-sweat smell of veneral disease clinics, she put the other girl’s proposals out of mind for a whole year, until the Virgin rewarded her in the person of her stepbrother Roberto (son of her Papa’s old
novia
), who sent her a registered letter all the way from Yucatan, informing her that if she were to ride the bus across Mexico to the grand hotel where he worked, she could earn big money cooking for the foreign tourists. Nobody at Beatrice’s house knew how to read, but the priest, who possessed power over all the churchbells, explained the letter to them and said: Girl, you must go. Roberto wants to do the good thing for you. —Her Papa wept, which made her surprised, ashamed, and pleased all at once. Then he said: Go with God. —And he gave her ten silver pesos. Her sister gave her an herb against witchcraft. And all her little brothers and sisters, who always used to pull her braids and break her toys, became very sad. Beatrice had never known that she was so important. As for her
novio,
Manuel, he grew very pale and wretched. He didn’t even dare to visit her Papa’s house to wish her farewell. He promised to wait for her for three years. Beatrice smiled at the deliciousness of another soul’s making promises to her. The two little Marias next door kissed her and said that they would pray for her. As for Juanita, she had been locked away by her Papa for going around with boys, so Beatrice, no matter how much she would have liked to learn more secrets and answers, was unable to tell her goodbye. Beatrice tried to be reasonable about this disappointment. Then her Papa made the sign of the cross over her and she went to Yucatan, but on the way she somehow lost the letter from Roberto
with the name of the grand hotel where he was working, and consequently she never met him.

She was afraid, but the truth was that she had been even more fearful of living in Roberto’s house. What if new sister-in-law had disliked her? People say that sisters-in-law never agree except when somebody dies. So it was really for the best. She knew she could work in the fields somewhere, or maybe in an ice cream factory where she could eat all she wanted. Or she could become a dressmaker—why not? She knew what a pretty dress was! She wanted to make black sleeveless miniskirts and formal gowns of red velvet. Her greatest fear was that some bandits might fall upon her and rape her until she died, but she prayed to the Virgin until she heard the same humming which used to haunt her childhood back home in the canyon, and then she knew that the Virgin would protect her. The next day she got a job in a shop. The owner said that she was very honest. Then he put his hand on her ass. Beatrice smiled at him just as she had smiled at her
novio:
such things meant nothing. Men whistled when she walked down the street, and that was likewise without consequence; in fact, it made her feel good.

One hot day maybe six weeks after Easter, Beatrice was in Merida beneath the canopy in the Plaza de la Independencia, when a birdlike old man who sat sipping mango ice among the people in the army-green folding chairs beckoned. It was a Sunday (she remembered that because everybody was dressed for church); they were about to reenact the Mestizo Wedding. Beatrice, who was wearing new tight bluejeans and lipstick of the brightest red she could find, came and sat between the old gentleman and a woman whose arm-skin was blotched like buckwheat pancakes. Her acquaintance wore white from head to toe. His white cowboy hat cooled and shaded her. He failed in handsomeness but he achieved elegance. He asked her whether she lived unmarried, and she said yes. He asked where her Papa was and she said far away. She wanted to believe that this old man was her protector. She longed to feel proud. There she was, sitting like a real lady, recruited into those two facing armies of green chairs, one under the awning, the other against the pillared portico of the Municipal Palace! She was so happy that she couldn’t stop smiling. It was very close and crowded. Her knees engaged the buttocks of two children in the row ahead. Fat women in white blouses lifted up their babies to watch the trumpeter tune his brass proboscis. Bespectacled old widows stirred sweet slush-heaps with their straws. Ladies fanned one another with sandalwood fans from China. Out of kindness or by mistake a woman fanned Beatrice, who squealed: Thank you, señora, thank you! —A sweating vendor dressed in white lowered an immense basket of tan-colored snacks from his shoulder especially for Beatrice, while her new friend, the birdlike gentleman, bought her exactly what she wanted: a bag of salt-crisped corn! No one had ever treated her so kindly. Manuel, her
novio
back home, had been a very shy and dirty boy who couldn’t buy her anything. Beatrice felt prouder every second. She almost believed that wings would burst from her shoulders so that she’d rise up into the air on a surge of everyone’s applause. In the sunny street it was raining yellow butterflies.

Now, with trumpets and stridulating rattles, while the death-pale master of ceremonies stood under an arch of the Municipal Palace, expressionlessly smoking cigarettes, the children of Merida filed out and began to dance. After each dance the master of ceremonies strode into the light and shouted:
Bravo! Bravissimo! Domingo, in Merida! Merida, Yucatan! Merida!
until the band began to blare the next dance tune, and he bowed himself back into the shadows. Beatrice had never seen anything so grand. There came the dance when each boy balanced a bottle of beer on his head. Everybody
applauded and Beatrice shrieked:
Ay!
She had fallen in love with all those dancing pairs of children in white, the boys wearing little white sombreros, as if they were the sons of her birdlike gentleman who now held her hand, the girls with yellow flowers in their hair and three stripes of floral embroidery down their long bleached dresses. Each pair wore red neckerchiefs, which on that day appeared to her most eminently remarkable.

Beatrice thought that she understood the way that Merida girls danced with their hands behind their backs. She wanted to dance that way, too. They all danced in the Mayan way, in mincing little steps, scarcely moving their upper bodies. The Mixteca way, Beatrice’s way, was different, but on that Sunday afternoon a sensation of almost belligerent rapture overpowered her; she believed that she could do anything. Her only fear was that Roberto might find her. And now, in tones simultaneously awed and gleeful, the master of ceremonies cried:
Our Queen of the Yucatan—sweet as a pastry, hot as a candle, bright as the sun!
Beatrice longed to see this personage, but never did.