Because Uncle Old’s wife had died a long time ago, his house was a house of men, and as such there was no attention to things of the spirit. No tablecloth or napkins, no flower garden growing from an empty lard tin, no stack of clean pressed linen, no pretty plates. Items were spartan, utilitarian, makeshift, thrifty, and filthy. Newspapers served as a doormat, seat cushions, or tablecloth. Fotonovela pages sufficed as toilet reading and toilet paper. A bent nail on the bathroom door was the only defender of privacy. A coffee can and a galvanized tub were the bath. And so on and on. A helter-skelter, trochemoche, come-what-may, venga lo que venga style of living.
—There are three pleasures in the world, Uncle Old said, and laughed. —Eating, shitting, and fucking, in that order! He made fried bologna tacos. He used American cheese for quesadillas! What a barbarity! He scrambled eggs and wieners and served them on homemade flour tortillas. Each morning Uncle rolled out huge dusty towers of fresh flour tortillas for his boys and served them hot with butter and salt for breakfast, or if he was feeling daring, with peanut butter. —Nothing like a hot peanut butter taco and a cup of coffee, Uncle said.
Uncle Old was badly dressed and, worse, bad-smelling. This affected the sensibilities of Narciso greatly, who had taken such pride in his lineage, and now to be confronted with his family “living like Hungarians,” meaning gypsies.
He wrote to his mother: Why, they are no better than barbarians. I believe this is the influence of living in the United States, don’t you think? They live in the very upholstery shop, with walls made from fabric scraps partitioning the workspace from the kitchen, if it can be called a kitchen. A camp stove is how they cook and a wooden door placed across two sawhorses is their table. The beds are any available furniture awaiting upholstery, a sofa or possibly two chairs pushed together, or the kitchen table. This is how they live, worse than soldiers camping in the field, for at least soldiers have order. The saddest part is that neither my uncle nor my cousins think it strange or want for anything better. It is astonishing!
—And how did you learn to make the flour tortillas, Uncle? Narciso asked, since los Reyes were accustomed to eating corn tortillas.
—The army, Uncle said. —And necessity.
Narciso wrote: Tacos. That’s all they eat here. Or hot dogs, which is like an American taco. You would think they’d forgotten a delicious squash blossom soup, or chile en nogada in walnut sauce and pomegranates, or red snapper Veracruz style, or any and all the other sublime delicacies of Mexican cooking. And what the Mexican restaurants here call Mexican food, it’s truly sad!
Narciso had arrived with hats, suits, linen shirts, and silk handkerchiefs with matching ascots. And here he was, expected to sweep the shop and strip furniture down to its frame! He’d never held a hammer, much less a broom. His imported British wing tips were ruined within a week, the leather scuffed, the soles pocked with tacks. Each night he plucked them out with pliers, counting as he worked while the cousins laughed at him behind his back.
What was truly barbarous was the schoolroom map of the United States his uncle had glued to the bathroom wall with corn syrup. It depicted the states in different colors with their capitals marked with a star. Each time he entered the bathroom, Narciso made it a point to memorize one state and its capital. He thought this knowledge might keep his memory sharp and distinguish him from the lowlifes called his cousins.
—But tell me, Uncle, why did you put the map up with corn syrup?
—Because there wasn’t any glue on hand when we thought to hang it.
All in all, Uncle Old seemed satisfied with what the United States had given him. It wasn’t a luxurious life, but it was a life and it was his. He had picked up a little of this and that over the years, and the this and that had paid a living. So, unlike his cousin Eleuterio of the piano hands, Uncle Old’s hands were covered with the calluses and blisters of his craft, the art and labor of making sofas and chairs. Awful work, Narciso thought, thank God I don’t have to do this forever. His own hands with their perfect Palmer penmanship were not used to the hammer, and standing all day on hard concrete was giving him corns as stout and sturdy as the shells on the backs of turtles. —My feet are very sensitive, Narciso complained, soaking his feet nightly in a tub of hot water. What a prince, Uncle thought, but didn’t say this.
The condition of Prince Narciso’s feet did not improve during the seven years he lived with his Uncle Old. They were as abused at the end of his U.S. stay as they were in the beginning, not from labor by then, but from pleasure. Narciso danced all weekend at the black-and-tan clubs on South State Street. This was during the time the Charleston was outlawed in some U.S. cities.†
In those days the most beautiful women were the stars of the silent screen. Women everywhere copied them and painted their mouths like valentines. But the woman Narciso Reyes fell in love with not only had a mouth like a cupid’s heart, but an ass like one upside down.
He’d seen her live onstage, a girl with beautiful legs and a behind like no one else’s. The woman was like the milk with a drizzle of coffee his mother served him as a boy before bedtime, coffee with lots of sugar, a woman who made him happy just by looking at her. She was happiness, a born comedienne. The audience was hers the moment she entered the spotlight. Her act was part pantomime, part acrobat, part dance. She laughed and winked, crossed her eyes, put her hands on her hips, pouted, pirouetted, stuck her butt out and shook it, did a Charleston, then a split, a somersault, then waddled off the stage only to cartwheel back and finish with a shimmy that shattered the house and nearly killed Narciso.
Narciso came to every show, made a pest of himself backstage, and fancied himself in love. He could not believe his good fortune when she plunked herself down on his lap one day, all arms and wiggling tongue.
Oh, to have such a woman as this. When he pressed his mouth to hers, he was filled with joy too. The laughter gurgled and overflowed and entered him, and energized and filled him with life. He decided he would marry this Freda McDonald who called herself Tumpy, who went by the stage name of Josephine Wells, showgirl with caramel skin. He would take care of her, he would tame her and make her his. He wept to hear her tale of how she had had to fight for everything that was hers. How she had run away from her hometown of Saint Louis in 1917, the same year as the race riots. How whites worried Southern Negroes were taking away their jobs even though most whites wouldn’t work for $2.35 a day in the sewer-pipe factory if you paid them!
—Freda McDonald, please do me the kindness of accepting …
—I told you, nobody calls me Freda but my mother. Can’t you read the marquee? My name is Jo. Jo Wells. But you can call me Tumpy. Which Narciso pronounced as “Tom-pi.” His English made her laugh.
—Tompita, heart of mine, I must ask you this …
—Honey, you name it.
—Please will you …? The capital of Idaho, what is?
—Shit, hell if I know.
—Oh, you keed!
And they wrestled and laughed and squealed, he trying to impress her with the names of all the U.S. states and their capitals—Springfield, Illinois; Sacramento, California; Austin, Texas—and she laughing and laughing at his funny way of talking.
In his arms her body glittered and shimmered and squirmed. It was like making love with a river of mercury, a boa constrictor, a weasel. It was lovely, bruto, tender, bonito, bonito. He’d had women pink as a rabbit, and dark as bitter chocolate, and all the caramelo shades in between. He’d had and had, and he was never filled up, never.
Until now.
Narciso wrote a letter home to his father: Father, she is Spanish like you. Well, Spanish on her father’s side. Her mother is half Cherokee and half Negro. But all together she is a real American and wonderful, and when you meet her …
¡Qué! What! Una negra to be his daughter-in-law! Una negra to become a Reyes! But this was too much. Eleuterio forgot that his own family would’ve disowned him if they’d met Regina. Of course, like everyone, his memory was
selective and he didn’t think of this.
It happened that Narciso’s letter arrived while his father was eating breakfast, but Eleuterio was never able to finish the meal. The news in his son’s letter caused Eleuterio his own death shimmy. Regina wired her son: FATHER DEAD RETURN HOME.
—My sky, I tell you in all confidence, for you I will die, but I have compromises now. You will wait? Promise, Tompita, my queen.
—Chili pie, I’ll do nothing but cry till you send for me.
As Destiny would have it, Narciso was boarding a train south to the border when Freda Josephine Tumpy McDonald Wells was also standing on another track in a felt cloche and a raccoon-collar coat, a cardboard suitcase with all her belongings beside her. Freda left Chicago with the company that same afternoon en route to Philadelphia to marry Billy Baker, abandon Billy Baker for New York, abandon New York for Paris, dance with a banana skirt, and well, the rest everybody knows is history.
* In 1915 more than half of the Mexican-American population emigrated from the Valley of Texas into war-torn Mexico fleeing the Texas Rangers, rural police ordered to suppress an armed rebellion of Mexican Americans protesting Anglo-American authority in South Texas. Supported by U.S. cavalry, their bullying led to the death of hundreds, some say thousands, of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, who were executed without trial. The end result was that Mexican-owned land was cleared, allowing development by Anglo newcomers. So often were Mexicans killed at the hands of the “Rinches,” that the San Antonio Express-News said it “has become so commonplace” that “it created little or no interest.” Little or no interest unless you were Mexican.
† The Charleston was named “the Dance of Death” after a Boston tragedy that claimed 147 lives when a Charleston-throbbing dance floor collapsed in a heap, causing the building to do the Charleston too. Variety reported: “The offbeat rhythm of the Charleston, reinforced by the indulgence in things alcoholic is said to have caused the Hotel Pickwick to sway so violently that it fell apart.”
30.
A Poco—You’re Kidding
Eleuterio was finishing a boiled egg and the heel of a toasted bolillo when he read his son’s letter. The shock proved so great, he suffered un fuerte coraje, that national syndrome known as a terrible rage, and on October 12, 1921, he was declared dead from a cerebral embolism. Because it isn’t the custom in that country to embalm the dead, Eleuterio’s corpse was simply displayed in the living room in his best suit, a black rosary laced in his hands, four candles lit at each corner, and on his belly a fan of red gladioli, the collective gift of his wife’s flea market customers.
This next part of the story I know sounds as if I am making it up, but the facts are so unbelievable they can only be true. The room was filled with the respectful murmur of a novena when Eleuterio’s niece let out a shriek like a dagger. Everyone thought she cried from grief. —What a good girl, that one, you can see she loved him the best. But it was because of what she noticed when she kissed the corpse good-bye. —He’s still warm! Look, his eyelids are twitching! It was true, even in death something behind his eyelids seemed to dance as nervously as it had when he was alive. —Virgen Purísima, he’s alive!
Immediately the doctor was summoned, the body moved to a bed, and all the hangers-on and relatives were first politely and then rudely requested to leave, because by now there were a lot of curious people about, neighbors and those walking down the street to see what they could see, metiches, busybodies, mirones, oglers, and mitoteros, liars/gossips/storytellers/troublemakers all rolled into one. These the doctor ordered out. Then with a stiff brush and rubbing alcohol, the doctor scrubbed Eleuterio back to life.
Little by little the body began to regain its color, and little by little Eleuterio Reyes began to breathe normally; accordingly, the doctor amended his final diagnosis from cerebral embolism to a cataleptic attack. Everyone was overjoyed, and a bottle of rompope was opened and glasses of that thick rum eggnog passed around.
It was an exuberant moment, perhaps the only epiphany in that decade of deprivations, until it was discovered that God had a wicked sense of humor.
Eleuterio was only half alive. Only the right half of his body awoke from the dead. The left half remained as sleep-filled as the day of his wake. From then on Eleuterio dragged himself about the apartment with a cane and mumbled a curious language made up of grunts, gestures, and spit that no one but Soledad could understand.
That evening the family celebrated Eleuterio’s half-resurrection. Then all the blood relatives signed a will. I, so and so, do hereby request that upon death I have my veins opened, or have my heart stabbed with a hat pin, or both, before burial to avoid being buried alive in the sad event I have inherited Eleuterio Reyes’ rare and unfortunate condition, et cetera, et cetera. Something like this, more or less, because that paper was lost among all the other items of no consequence that no one can remember exactly and no one can entirely forget.
31.
The Feet of Narciso Reyes
All his life Narciso never knew what was happening to him when it happened. As if his life was a pair of dice, and the world a cup that shook him about and let him drop at odd moments. Only after the rattling and rolling did he realize what numbers life had cast him. That is how it was love flourished without his being aware of it. He had only to feel the sharp pain in his chest to be reminded he was alive. And love is like that, too, constantly reminding us with its sharp delights and sharp pains, that we are, alas, alive.
When Narciso came home, Regina took one look at him and realized her baby was gone. In his place was un fanfarrón, a young peacock, a man with glints of the boy gleaming here and there, now and then, depending on the angle or the light. His neck was thick and powerful, there was a buoyant spring to his walk now, and his body had grown taut and strong. But there was something else. Something throbbing in his eyes, or perhaps something no longer there. He had that look people have when they’ve experienced a disappointment in life.
Why do people delight in inflicting bad news? Even before Narciso’s train pulled into Mexico City, a telegram from his Chicago cousins arrived that promptly and joyously reported his jilting. A pain wheezed from that little wound above the little wound—the hole in his heart where Narciso had once harbored la negrita Tompi. Ah, Regina thought to herself, he has the look of a man deprived of a mother’s love; I’ll fix that.
Among her other duties, Soledad was now assigned to help keep Narciso clean. Never mind that he had taken care of himself just fine when he had lived in Chicago all those years. Now that he was home, Regina insisted that Soledad act as his nurse, and Soledad was now obliging with a washbasin and a kettle of hot water she had heated on the stove.
—When they put me against the wall, I thought they’d shot me even before I heard a gunshot, because I felt a little heat trickle out from my body and run down my leg. Only later when I began to stink with fear, because fear stinks, did you know? Only then did I realize it wasn’t blood, but urine.
—You’re lying! Soledad said.
—I swear to God it’s the truth. It’s almost like the story of Adam when God borrowed his rib to make Eve. They had to saw through three of my ribs, put your hand here. That’s what they did to get to the lung that collapsed, because that’s what happened to me, Narciso explained.
—What a barbarity! And is it true you can never swim anymore?
—Never, Narciso said, hanging his head and pretending to feel sorry for himself.
Narciso’s displays of sadness only endeared him to his nurse. Such a helpless thing, and with eyes as tender and dark as café de olla, as if at any moment he was about to cry. He looked sadder than she remembered him. More alone. This made him even more attractive. Sweet, Soledad could not help noticing, and those feet—too small for a man.
Such delicate feet! Soft as doves, as pale as the behind of a nun, luminescent as the wings of moths under the nacre moon, as delicately veined as marble and as transparent as a teacup. Once they had been sm
ooth as river stones, but now they were calloused like her own.
—Corns, Narciso explained. —Up north I had to work como un negro.
Which is to say he worked very hard. The truth, the corns were from dancing the Charleston all night, not from hard labor.
In that instant Soledad’s heart flooded with pity. She wanted to bless those feet with kisses, caress, cradle, bathe them in milk. But as always, she was afraid of her feelings and simply said, —You’ve got hooves like a girl’s. This was meant as a compliment but taken as an insult.
Narciso Reyes let out a laugh as if he was used to being ridiculed. The girl Soledad brought out strange feelings in him. He remembered the first time he’d felt like this, a long time ago that first day he talked to her, on the stairwell of her Aunty Fina’s. He had tried to comfort her with a kiss, but missed; a crooked kiss of childhood that had landed on her eye, blinding her a little. They’d been kids. And now here she was all filled out with a nice little behind and a sweet bounce in her blouse every time she moved. He’d show her a thing or two he’d picked up in Chicago.
Then Narciso Reyes tugged Soledad toward him and kissed the woman who would become the mother of his children. In that kiss was his destiny. And hers.
32.
The World Does Not Understand
Eleuterio Reyes
Even with a lifetime of experiences, life takes one by surprise. So Eleuterio Reyes was astonished not only to have died but to be alive again and to have his only child at his bedside. Here was his Narciso, a little lizard strutting about in a tight suit and patent leather shoes, a red carnation in his buttonhole. He was nothing but a baby-faced dandy, a mama’s boy, a frightened spoiled brat, a snot-nosed kid disguised as a man, crying real tears, promising on his knees, —I’ll do anything you say, Father, name it, just don’t die on me again.