—Why?
—Well, I don’t know. I suppose because it looks like candy, don’t you think?
I nod. And in that instant I can’t think of anything I want more than this cloth the golden color of burnt-milk candy.
—Can I have it, Grandfather?
—No, mi cielo. I’m afraid it’s not mine to give, but you can touch it. It’s very soft, like corn silk.
But when I touch the caramelo rebozo a shriek rises from the courtyard, and I jump back as if the rebozo is made of fire.
—¡¡¡Celayaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
It’s the Awful Grandmother yelling as if she’s cut off a finger. I leave the Grandfather and the caramelo rebozo, and run slamming doors behind me, jumping down stairs two at a time. When I get to the courtyard, I remember to answer the way the Grandmother instructed.
—¿Mande usted? At your orders?
—Ah, there she is. Celaya, sweetness, come here. Don’t be frightened, my child. Remember how she used to sing when she was just a baby? ¡Qué maravilla! She was the same as Shirley Temple. I-den-ti-cal, I swear to you. Still in diapers but there she was singing her heart out, remember? We should have put her on the Chocolate Express Show, but no, no one listens to me. Think of the money she could’ve brought home by now. Come, Celaya, dearest. Get up on this chair and let’s see if you can still sing like you used to. Let’s see. Ándale, sing for your granny. Watch.
—I … don’t know.
—What do you mean you don’t know?
—I don’t know if I can remember. That was when I was little.
—Nonsense! The body always remembers. Get up here!
The relatives begin chanting, —Que cante la niña Lalita, que cante la niña Lalita.
—Stand up straight, the Grandmother orders. —Throw your shoulders back, Celaya. Swallow. A big gulp of air. That’s it. Now, sing.
—Pretty baby, pretty baby, tan tarrán-tara taran-ta, tara-ranta-ranta-rán …
My voice tiny in the beginning, but then I puff up like a canary and sing as loud as I can.
—PRETTY BABY OF MINE, OF MINE. PRETTY BABY OF … MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!
A small silence.
—No, the Grandmother announces matter-of-factly. —She can’t sing. Juchi, play that song I like, the one from my times, “Júrame.” Come on, don’t be bad, play it for me. Todos dicen que es mentira que te quiero …
For the rest of the evening I hide upstairs and watch the party from the covered balcony where no one can watch me watching, my face pressed against the rails, the rails cool against my hot skin. Once I got my head stuck between the space between an “s” and a flower. They had to use the brown bar of laundry soap to set me free, and afterward my head hurt … from the iron bars and from the scolding. And my heart hurt from the brothers laughing, but I don’t like to think about that.
The music and the spirals of cigarette smoke rising up like genies. The other kids already asleep wherever they fell. Draped on a chair. Or on a volcano of coats. Or under a table. Everywhere except in their beds. But no one notices.
The bodies below moving and twirling like bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope. Tables and chairs pushed to the edges to make room for dancing. “Vereda tropical” playing from the hi-fi. Aunties in silk dresses so tight they seem to explode like orchids, aunties laughing with their big flower mouths, and the air sweet-sweet with their ladies’ perfume, and sweeter still the men’s cologne, the kind men wear here in Mexico, sweeter than flowers, like the sugary words whispered in the women’s ears—mi vida, mi cielo, muñeca, mi niña bonita.
The men in their shark suits, gray with a little lightning bolt of blue, or olive with a gleam of gold when they move. A stiff white handkerchief in the pocket. The man’s hand leading a woman when they dance, just a little tug, just a little like when you yank a kite to remind it—Don’t go too far. And the woman’s hand nesting inside the man’s big heart-shaped hand, and his other hand on her big heart-shaped hips. A beautiful woman with black-black eyes and dark skin, who is our mother in her good fuchsia satin dress bought at the Three Sisters on Madison and Pulaski, and her matching fuchsia cut-glass earrings. Swish of stockings against the cream-colored nylon slip with its twin shells of lace on top and an accordion pleat at the hem, and one strap, always one, lazy and loose asking to be put back. My father with a curl of lavender cigarette smoke, his mouth hot next to my mother’s ear when he whispers, his mustache tickling, the roughness of his cheek, and my mother throwing her head back and laughing.
I’m so sleepy, except I don’t want to go to bed, I might miss something. I lean my head against the balcony rails and shut my eyes, and jump when the guests start roaring. It’s only Uncle Fat-Face dancing with a broom as if it was a lady. Uncle likes to make everyone laugh. When I’ve had enough of the broom dance, I get up to look for the Grandfather. The dining room door is heavy, I have to pull it open with both hands.
But when I step inside I don’t move.
I scramble downstairs to tell everyone, only I don’t have the words for what I want to say. Not in English. Not in Spanish.
—The wall has fallen, I keep saying in English.
—What?
—Upstairs. In the big dining room. The wall fell. Come and see.
—What does this kid want? Go see your mother.
—It’s that the wall has fallen.
—Later, sweetie, not now, I’m busy.
—The wall in the dining room, it came down like snow.
—How this child loves to be a pest!
—What is it, my queen? Tell me, my heaven.
—La pared arriba, es que se cayó. Ven, Papá, ven.
—You go, Zoila. You’re the mother.
—¡Ay! Always, always I’m the mother when you can’t be bothered. All right, all right already. Quit pulling at me, Lala, you’re going to rip my dress.
I tug Mother upstairs, but it’s like tugging a punching clown. She tips and wobbles and laughs. Finally, we make it all the way up the stairs.
—Now, this better be good!… Holy Toledo!!!
The dining room is powdered with a layer of white plaster like sugar. White plaster over everything, rug, tables, chairs, lamps. Big chunks of plaster here and there, too, like pieces of birthday cake.
Mother shouts downstairs. —Everybody, quick! The ceiling’s fallen!
¡Se cayó el cielo raso! Father says.
And then it is I learn the words for what I want to say. “Ceiling” and “cielo.” Cielo—the word Father uses when he calls me “my heaven.” The same word the Little Grandfather reaches for when he wants to say the same thing. Only he says it in English. —My sky.
—You know I don’t like to say, and I tell you this in confidence, but it’s that Memo who is responsible. I found him hiding on the roof just this morning.
—You don’t say! That monkey! Leave it to me. I’ll take care of it.
—Poor thing. He’s so much slower than our Elvis. After all, they’re only a month apart in age. Have you ever considered that maybe he’s retarded?
—Like hell! It’s the cheap contract work, for crying out loud!
—Aunty, this is the truth! Antonieta Araceli hid some of our toys under the Grandfather’s bed. I saw.
—¡Mentirosa! It wasn’t me! You just like to invent stories, mocosa. You believe me, don’t you, Mami?
—Ya mero. Almost! Did you see that? He almost put out her eye!
—Who did this to you, my heaven?
—It was … cousin Toto.
—You know my gorda has never lied to me. Never. If she says she didn’t do it, she didn’t do it. I know my own daughter!
—¡Chango! If I catch you touching my kids again I’ll take off my belt …
—Take your hands off my boy, or I’ll beat the crap out of you myself.
—Estás loca, I wasn’t going to …
—You can’t address my wife like that, tarugo!
—Who are YOU to call me an idi
ot? You’re the one who organized this picnic.
—¡Ay, caray! Don’t start, brother. Don’t even begin. Don’t YOU blame me for your bright ideas.
—You know I usually keep out of the affairs of my daughters-in-law, but are you aware Zoila is calling your child a liar?
—Válgame Dios. It never fails—a hair in the soup!
—My life, I told you this was going to happen. First you loan your brother money, and now look. This is how he pays you back.
—That’s it. I’ve had it. Licha, start packing. Tomorrow we leave for Toluca. It’s settled.
All of a sudden the Grandmother’s children are planning to leave. Uncle Baby and family to Veracruz. Uncle Fat-Face and Aunty Licha to her relatives in Toluca. But tonight there is a great slamming of doors and crying as the children are led whimpering off to bed and the guests accompanied to the courtyard gates.
—Thank you. Happinesses. Good night, good night, some of the guests say, while others say only “good, good,” too tired to say the “night” part.
The girl Oralia unlocks the gates and yawns. The gates on their squeaky hinges yawn too. Señor Coochi leaves without even looking at me. Then the gates shut with a terrible clang like in prison movies.
Maybe he forgot. Maybe he has to get my princess room ready. Maybe he meant tomorrow. The next night after our hot milk with a little drizzle of coffee, I go down to the courtyard, wedge the tips of my black patent leather shoes onto the bottom lip of the gate, pull myself up to the open square where the mailman drops the letters, and into this frame squeeze my face. The hiss of car wheels on wet streets after it rains, and the car lights coming toward our house that make me think maybe it’s him, but each time it’s not.
—Lalaaaa!!! Are you coming up, or do I have to come down and get you?
—Coming!
But he doesn’t come for me.
Not the next night. Nor the next. Nor the next next next.
14.
Fotonovelas
Now that the others are rid of, the Awful Grandmother can unlock the walnut-wood armoire and indulge her favorite son. She brings out of hiding what she has been saving since his last visit. Lopsided stacks of fotonovelas* and comic books. El libro secreto. Lágrimas, risas y amor. La familia Burrón. Father reads these and his ESTO sports newspaper printed with an ink the color of chocolate milk. Father spends whole days indoors in bed, smoking cigarettes and reading. He doesn’t leave the room. The Awful Grandmother brings him his meals on a tray. From outside the door there is nothing but the sound of pages turning and Father laughing like the letter “k.”
* The Grandmother saved him her favorite fotonovelas:
“Wives There Are Plenty, But Mothers—Only One”
“Virgen Santísima, You Killed Her!”
“The So-and-So”
“Women—They’re All Alike!”
“I Killed the Love of My Life”
“Don’t Make Me Commit a Craziness”
“He Doesn’t Give a Damn What You Feel”
“The Story without End”
“The Unhappiest Woman of All”
“I Married a Worker without Culture (But with Me He Became Refined)”
“The Glories of His Love”
“I Was His Queen … Why Did He Change?”
“The Woman with Whom He Had Relations”
“Should I Leave, or What?”
“I Ask God to Guide Me Because I Don’t Know What to Do”
15.
Cinderella
—Whenever I enter a room, your Aunty Light-Skin and your Grandmother stop talking.
That’s what Mother says to me when she’s scrubbing our clothes in the rooftop sink. The washerwoman Amparo washes on Mondays, but Mother begins washing our clothes herself, because the Grandmother has been complaining about the high water bills, and the high electric bills, and the servants, and the food bills, and this and this and this. That’s what Mother tells me, spitting it out under her breath when she sprinkles our clothes with the detergent and pours cold water from a coffee can, and washes my brothers’ pants in the stone sink with the ridged bottom, or scrubs a shirt collar with the little straw broom shaped like a dancer’s dress. The coffee can scraping against the ridged bottom, and Mother muttering and spitting and grunting things I can’t quite hear under her breath.
Every afternoon, Mother gets dressed and takes me with her on her walks.
—Lalita, let’s go.
—Where?
—I don’t care.
And every day we walk a little farther. First only to the kiosks at the corner for magazines and Chiclets gum. And later down the boulevard la calzada de Guadalupe or Misterios. And sometimes toward downtown. On the shady part of the sidewalk, the sweet smell of oranges. The orange lady on a towel stacking oranges into pretty orange mountains, her baby asleep on a lumpy sack. In another doorway, spread over a speckled rebozo, a pumpkin seed mountain, the pumpkin seeds sold in newspaper cones. A very old man with one eye shut and the other milky holds out his hand and whispers, —Blessed charity, and then roars, —God will pay you back, when we give him two coins.
Other times we walk toward La Villa, the air foggy with the rumble and wheeze and hum of buses and taxis and cars, the yelp and bark and bellow of vendors selling balloons and souvenir photographs and candles and holy cards, and the women slapping sweet gordita cookies on the griddle, frying plate lunches, pouring fruit drinks. The burnt smell of gorditas and roasted corn.
But we never go inside la basílica. We sit in the sun on the plaza steps till our bones warm up and our behinds get tired, eating hot gorditas and drinking pineapple sodas, watching a drunk man dancing backward with a dog, a girl crocheting doilies with pink string, a widow under a black umbrella wobbling to church on her knees slowly slowly, like a circus lady on a high wire.
Or sometimes we go toward the stink of the butchers’ market where the heads of the dead bulls—from the bullfights?—slouch in a big sticky pool, their fat ugly tongues drooping, and their eyes full of buzzing flies. —Don’t look!
And one day we even walk into a restaurant on a corner boulevard with shiny green and black tiles on the walls like a checkerboard, inside and out, and metal curtains that open wide onto both boulevards so that when you look in you can see clear to the other street, cars and buses and people coming home from work hurrying past, and a truck with a chain rattling from its bumper sending sparks and dust. And we sit down at a nice table covered in clean brown paper with a salt shaker with grains of uncooked rice mixed in with the salt, and a salt shaker with toothpicks inside, and a drinking glass stuffed with triangle napkins, and the table dances until the waiter wedges a folded match cover under one leg. And we order the lunch special that comes with fideo soup and limes, and hot bolillo bread and little balls of butter, and a breaded steak, which Mother cuts for me.
On the radio Jorge Negrete is singing a sad song about a flower the river carries away. Mother with those cat-eyed sunglasses, looking out at the street, out at nowhere, out at nothing at all, sighing. A long time. In a new white dress she bought especially for this trip. A sleeveless dress she ironed herself, that makes her dark skin look darker, like clay bricks when it rains. And I think to myself how beautiful my mother is, looking like a movie star right now, and not our mother who has to scrub our laundry.
Mother breaking toothpicks into a little mountain, until there aren’t any more toothpicks left. When she finally remembers I’m sitting next to her, touches my cheek and asks, —Is there anything else you want, Cinderella? Which means she is in a good mood, because she only calls me that when she isn’t angry and buys me things, Lulú sodas, milk gelatins, cucumber spears, corn on the cob, a mango on a stick.
—Is there anything else you want, Cinderella?
And I’m so happy to have my mother all to myself buying good things to eat, and talking, just to me, without my brothers bothering us.
When we return to the house on Destiny Street, I can’t help i
t. The happiness bubbles out of my mouth like the fizz from a soda when you shake and shake it. The first thing I say when I run into the courtyard is, —Guess what! We went to a restaurant! And it’s as if we were in a magic spell, my mother and I, but with those words I’ve broken the spell.
The Grandmother makes a face, and Aunty Light-Skin makes a face, and Father makes faces too, and later Mother scolds me and says, —Big-mouth, why did you have to go and tell? But if I wasn’t supposed to tell, why wasn’t I supposed to? And why didn’t Mother tell me not to tell before and not after? And now why is everyone angry just because we ate in a restaurant? I don’t know anything, except I know this. I am the reason why Mother is screaming:
—I can’t stand it anymore, I’m getting the hell out of here. I can’t even open the refrigerator and eat an apple if I feel like it. ¡Me voy a largar, me oyes!
And Father saying, —Zoila! Be quiet, they’ll hear you!
And Mother yelling even louder, —I don’t give a good goddamn who hears me!
And then I don’t know why, but I’m crying, and the thing I can’t forget, Mother taking off one of her shoes and tossing it across the room, and later when I think about it, how I’ll remember it different, outdoors, against the night sky, even though it didn’t happen like that. A Mexico City twilight full of stars like the broken glass on top of the garden walls, and a jaguar moon looking down on me, and my mother’s glass shoe flying flying flying across the broken-glass sky.
16.
El Destino Es el Destino
—What do you take me for, a machine? Cleaning up last week’s dining room disaster alone was a huge task. Enormous. Monumental. You have no idea of the labor. I’m only flesh and bone, God help me, and what with that lazy Oralia, how am I supposed to handle so much for so many, tell me? And did I mention the expenses? We’re not rich, you know. Thank God for your father’s pension and tlapalería, and your sister’s handsome salary. But remember, we’ve lost the income from the two apartments this summer; because I asked the tenants to vacate and leave the rooms for you all. No, I’m not complaining. Of course, I’d rather have my family near. What’s money compared to the joy of having one’s family close by? You have to make sacrifices. Family always comes first. Remember that. Inocencio, haven’t I taught you anything?