Woman Hollering Creek (6 page)

I don’t think they understand how it is to be a girl. I don’t think they know how it is to have to wait your whole life. I count the months for the baby to be born, and it’s like a ring of water inside me reaching out and out until one day it will tear from me with its own teeth.

Already I can feel the animal inside me stirring in his own uneven sleep. The witch woman says it’s the dreams of weasels that make my child sleep the way he sleeps. She makes me eat white bread blessed by the priest, but I know it’s the ghost of him inside me that circles and circles, and will not let me rest.

Abuelita said they sent me here just in time, because a little later Boy Baby came back to our house looking for me, and she had to chase him away with the broom. The next thing we hear, he’s in the newspaper clippings his sister sends. A picture of him looking very much like stone, police hooked on either arm … on
the road to
Las Grutas de Xtacumbilxuna,
the Caves of the Hidden Girl … eleven female bodies … the last seven years …

Then I couldn’t read but only stare at the little black-and-white dots that make up the face I am in love with.

All my girl cousins here either don’t talk to me, or those who do, ask questions they’re too young to know
not
to ask. What they want to know really is how it is to have a man, because they’re too ashamed to ask their married sisters.

They don’t know what it is to lay so still until his sleep breathing is heavy, for the eyes in the dim dark to look and look without worry at the man-bones and the neck, the man-wrist and man-jaw
thick and strong, all the salty dips and hollows, the stiff hair of the brow and sour swirl of sideburns, to lick the fat earlobes that taste of smoke, and stare at how perfect is a man.

I tell them, “It’s a bad joke. When you find out you’ll be sorry.”

I’m going to have five children. Five. Two girls. Two boys. And one baby.

The girls will be called Lisette and Maritza. The boys I’ll name Pablo and Sandro.

And my baby. My baby will be named Alegre, because life will always be hard.

Rachel says that love is like a big black piano being pushed off the top of a three-story building and you’re waiting on the bottom to catch it. But Lourdes says it’s not that way at all. It’s like a top, like all the colors in the world are spinning so fast they’re not colors anymore and all that’s left is a white hum.

There was a man, a crazy who lived upstairs from us when we lived on South Loomis. He couldn’t talk, just walked around all day with this harmonica in his mouth. Didn’t play it. Just sort of breathed through it, all day long, wheezing, in and out, in and out.

This is how it is with me. Love I mean.

My
Tocaya
 

Have you seen this girl? You must’ve seen her in the papers. Or then again at Father & Son’s Taco Palace No. 2 on Nogalitos. Patricia Bernadette Benavídez, my
tocaya
, five feet, 115 pounds, thirteen years old.

Not that we were friends or anything like that. Sure we talked. But that was before she died and came back from the dead. Maybe you read about it or saw her on TV. She was on all the news channels. They interviewed anyone who knew her. Even the p.e. teacher who
had
to say nice things—
She was full of energy, a good kid, sweet
. Sweet as could be, considering she was a freak. Now why didn’t anyone ask me?

Patricia Benavídez. The “son” half of Father & Son’s Taco Palace No. 2 even before the son quit. That’s how this Trish inherited the paper hat and white apron after school and every weekend, bored, a little sad, behind the high counters where customers ate standing up like horses.

That wasn’t enough to make me feel sorry for her, though, even if her father
was
mean. But who could blame him? A girl who wore rhinestone earrings and glitter high heels to school was destined
for trouble that nobody—not God or correctional institutions—could mend.

I think she got double promoted somewhere and that’s how come she wound up in high school before she had any business being here. Yeah, kids like that always try too hard to fit in. Take this
tocaya
—same name as me, right? But does she call herself
la
Patee, or Patty, or something normal? No, she’s gotta be different. Says her name’s “Tri-ish.” Invented herself a phony English accent too, all breathless and sexy like a British Marilyn Monroe. Real goofy. I mean, whoever heard of a Mexican with a British accent? Know what I mean? The girl had problems.

But if you caught her alone, and said,
Pa-trrri-see-ah
—I always made sure I said it in Spanish—
Pa-trrri-see-ah, cut the bull crap and be for real
. If you caught her without an audience, I guess she was all right.

That’s how I managed to put up with her when I knew her, just before she ran away. Disappeared from a life sentence at that taco house. Got tired of coming home stinking of crispy tacos. Well, no wonder she left. I wouldn’t want to stink of crispy tacos neither.

Who knows what she had to put up with. Maybe her father beat her. He beat the brother, I know that. Or at least they beat each other. It was one of those fist fights that finally did it—drove the boy off forever, though probably he was sick of stinking of tacos too. That’s what I’m thinking.

Then a few weeks after the brother was gone, this
tocaya
of mine had her picture in all the papers, just like the kids on milk cartons:

Some people.

What did I care Benavídez disappeared? Wouldn’t’ve. If it wasn’t for Max Lucas Luna Luna, senior, Holy Cross, our brother school. They sometimes did exchanges with us. Teasers is what they were. Sex Rap Crap is what we called it, only the sisters called them different—Youth Exchanges. Like where they’d invite some of the guys from Holy Cross over here for Theology, and some of us girls from Sorrows would go over there. And we’d pretend like we were real interested in the issue “The Blessed Virgin: Role Model for Today’s Young Woman,” “Petting: Too Far, Too Fast, Too Late,” “Heavy Metal and the Devil.” Shit like that.

Not every day. Just once in a while as kind of an experiment. Catholic school was afraid of putting us all together too much, on account of hormones. That’s what Sister Virginella said. If you can’t conduct yourselves like proper young ladies when our guests arrive, we’ll have to suspend our Youth Exchanges indefinitely. No whistling, grabbing, or stomping in the future,
is that clear?!!!

Alls I know is he’s got these little hips like the same size since he was twelve probably. Little waist and little ass wrapped up neat and sweet like a Hershey bar. Damn! That’s what I remember.

Turns out Max Lucas Luna Luna lives next door to the freak. I mean, I never even bothered talking to Patricia Benavídez before, even though we were in the same section of General Business. But she comes up to me one day in the cafeteria when I’m waiting for my french fries and goes:

“Hey,
tocaya
, I know someone who’s got the hots for you.”

“Yeah, right,” I says, trying to blow her off. I don’t want to be seen talking to no flake.

“You know a guy named Luna from Holy Cross, the one who came over for that Theology exchange, the cute one with the ponytail?”

“So’s?”

“Well, he and my brother Ralphie are tight, and he told Ralphie not to tell nobody but he thinks Patricia Chávez is real fine.”

“You lie, girl.”

“Swear to God. If you don’t believe me, call my brother Ralphie.”

Shit! That was enough to make me Trish Benavídez’s best girlfriend for life, I swear. After that, I
always
made sure I got to General Business class early. Usually she’d have something to tell me, and if she didn’t, I made sure to give her something to pass on to Max Lucas Luna Luna. But it was painful slow on account of this girl worked so much and didn’t have no social life to speak of.

That’s how this Patricia Bernadette got to be our messenger of luh-uv for a while, even though me and Max Lucas Luna Luna hadn’t gotten beyond the I-like-you/Do-you-like-me stage. Hadn’t so much as seen each other since the rap crap, but I was working on it.

I knew they lived somewhere in the Monte Vista area. So I’d ride my bike up and down streets—Magnolia, Mulberry, Huisache, Mistletoe—wondering if I was hot or cold. Just knowing Max Lucas Luna Luna might appear was enough to make my blood laugh.

The week I start dropping in at Father & Son’s Taco Palace No. 2, is when she decides to skip. First we get an announcement over the intercom from Sister Virginella.
I
am sorry to have to announce one of our youngest and dearest students has strayed from home. Let us keep her in our hearts and in our prayers until her safe return
. That’s when she first got her picture in the paper with her ma’s weepy message.