Joaquin opened the refrigerator door. “We’re fresh out of oranges, fresh out of English muffins, and the potatoes are growing roots. Better run to the store, gringo.”
“Gringo hates grocery shopping. If Joaquin is feeling so great, why doesn’t he go grocery shopping?”
“Joaquin doesn’t want to waste the best day he’s had in months on a trip to the store. Why don’t we just go out?”
“There’s an idea.”
“I’m serious, Jake.”
“Well, it sounds serious, anyway.”
“I have to get out of this apartment. I’m gonna go crazy. I haven’t been out for a couple of weeks. I feel like a dog in a kennel.” “What if you get overtired?”
“What if we stay home and get killed in an earthquake?” Joaquin laughed, but Jake shook his head.
“C’mon, honey, let’s go out.”
“Honey?”
“I forgot you don’t like to be called that too—too domestic, too feminine.” He laughed. “Come on, Jacob Lesley—let’s you and me go out.”
“I don’t want you to get sick, Joaquin.”
“I have AIDS, Jacob, I am sick!”
Jake slammed his fist on the table. “Don’t use that word. J hate that word—you know I hate it.”
“I hate that word as much as you—but it’s not the word that’s killing us, Jake.”
“You promised not to use that goddamned word.” He shook his forefinger at his lover.
“It was a stupid promise. I’m dying, goddamnit—but I’m not dying today—today I’m going out, today I’m dressing up, today I’m going to enjoy being alive without being afraid.” He waited for Jake to say something, but nothing came out of his lips. He watched as Jake sat there clenching his teeth trying to reel in the rage that often threatened to possess him completely. He waited, and when he felt the threat had passed, he spoke again: “You can’t save me.” He paused, considering what he would say next. “It’s not your fault,” that’s what he wanted to say, “it’s not your fault.” Before he said anything else, Jacob interrupted him.
“If I can’t keep you healthy—then what the hell can I do?”
“Take me to breakfast and a movie.”
Jake rose from his chair and held him. “Why am I always fighting you?” he whispered.
“It’s how you love.”
“I hate the way I love.”
“Don’t hate it. Please don’t hate it.”
“Why are we whispering?”
“So no one will hear.”
Jacob laughed. “No one’s here but us.”
Joaquin raised his voice and talked into his neck. “We could eat breakfast at some joint, take a walk around the city, go to an afternoon movie—maybe see some friends—what do you say, Jake?”
Jake kissed him on the forehead. “How about if you dry your hair first?”
Joaquin dug his head deep into Jake’s chest. “OK,” he said. “You know, I feel almost normal today.”
“Then let’s have an almost-normal day.”
Julimes, Chihuahua. 1974
Joaquin watched passively as the men lowered his father into the grave. He moved his eyes from one mourner to the next wondering why anyone would feel sad at this event. Perhaps it was all a public performance, a ritual everyone needed to enact.
Even as he was being lowered to the ground, he saw his father’s dark face, his smile, and he could almost smell the liquor on his breath. Once, he had refused to tell him where his mother had hidden a bottle of whiskey; his father had knocked him to the ground and he had only stopped beating him because his brother had taken the bottle from its hiding place and waved it in front of his face. “Mom will be mad,” he’d told his brother. “You should have let him keep beating me.” “He would have killed you,” his brother had said. He stared at the men who had carried his father’s casket to the cemetery. He studied the priest as he handed his mother a crucifix and whispered something in her ear. He liked the priest’s face; he liked the way he moved, the way he respected the ground. The priest was as old as his father, but stronger and kinder, and he had smile lines on his face. Joaquin had once asked him if he could be his father. “No,” the priest had said, “we don’t pick our parents. God gives us all a mother and a father.” “Then God chose badly,” he’d answered. He had expected the priest to get angry but the priest had smiled and put his rough hand on his face. “God doesn’t choose badly, but people often do,” he said. “Just remember that.” After that conversation, the thought entered his head that his mother had chosen very badly. He stopped blaming God for her choice.
Two nights earlier, Joaquin’s mother had told him that his father had been killed in an accident, but he knew his father had been shot in a fight—he had heard it from his friends, had heard his older brother talking, and had heard the talk in the streets of the village. A man had killed him because he was sleeping with his wife. His mother could not protect him from the voices of the village. Julimes was not a good place for secrets; Julimes knew every woman his father had bedded down, every man he had ever cheated; Julimes repeated the secrets of the fathers to the sons.
He stared at his mother’s face, her long perfectly combed hair that was as black as her dress. Her eyes were red, and the tears fell slowly as if they were keeping time. He wondered if she had loved him—or if she was crying because she was relieved. But it was he who was relieved, he who was glad he no longer had to defend his father’s reputation in the village, he who was glad he no longer had to pay him respect in his house as if he was some kind of god. His father had never spoken to him except to utter a command: It was Joaquin’s job to keep his father’s shoes shined, his job to bring in water, to gather wood, to run all his errands, his job to ask for credit at the village store. Joaquin had once gone out to hunt rabbits with his older brother and had accidentally found his father making love to a girl. His father had slowly dressed himself, then slapped them both with all his might. Joaquin had fallen to the ground. “That’s to remind you to keep your mouths shut.” His father had later given him some money. Joaquin had taken his father’s bribe quietly. Now, as he took one last look at the old man’s body, he was almost happy. He had been treated as if he were invisible, and now he would no longer have to pretend he was a ghost. As he watched his mother cry, he imagined she was crying because she was now as free as he was, free of her bad choice. He hoped she was not crying because she had loved him; he did not deserve her love or her tears. He reached for his mother’s arm. “Mama, no llores. Yo te protejo.” His mother had clutched him to herself and wept into his shoulder. He had vaguely hoped she would never let go of him.
Two weeks after his father’s death, Joaquin’s mother went begging for food in the village. The priest sent her home with beans and rice, and told her the streets were no place for a decent woman. A day later, he arrived with a job offer for Jose, Joaquin’s older brother. The man who maintained the church grounds and cemetery was old and sick; he had gone to live with his daughter in Monterrey. Jose’s salary at the church was small, but it was enough for them to live on. They had little, but they needed little. The priest was kind, and sometimes he brought Jose and Joaquin new clothes or brought his mother fabric to make sheets and skirts.
Joaquin spent his free time playing and hunting in the desert. He knew every arroyo, every path, every bush. He knew the best places to hunt rabbits, knew where the rattlesnake dens were located, knew where most of the people of the village hid things. Sometimes he dug the treasures up, and examined them—but it never occurred to him to take what did not belong to him.
Now that his father was dead, he felt that the desert had taken his place. The desert loved him, was good to him, gave him food, provided a place to run and play. He never thought of other places, never even imagined a world outside of this vast and desolate place. In his mind, he would be a boy forever and he would live with his mother and brother—and when they were in trouble the priest would help them. They would live like tha
t forever—just him and his family and the priest and the desert. His mind was a simple place, and, for a time, there was nothing to disturb him.
One evening, he came home with three rabbits and handed them to his mother. She smiled at him. “Mi hombrecito,” she said, “te adoro.” But she looked sad and Joaquin discovered his brother, Jose, was sick. He tossed and turned on the bed, and he was white and could not keep from moaning. She stayed up all night trying to keep the fever down, but in the morning he was still on fire. “Go and get the priest, “she told Joaquin. He ran to the church and returned with the priest. When he entered their house, he sat with his mother and they spoke. Joaquin did not listen to what they were saying. Jose seemed to be far away and he wondered if his brother would return from the place to where he had drifted. The priest stayed. He took out his holy oils from his bag and rubbed them into Jose’s forehead, his hands, his chest, his feet. He spoke words over him, and Joaquin and his mother answered the priest’s prayers as they knelt beside the bed next to the candles and the crucifix and his brother’s sick body. Joaquin could hear his mother begging God not to take him. “No te lo lleves. Diosito Santo, no te lo lleves.” When he slopped breathing, his mother howled into the night like a wild animal caught in a trap. She pounded on the priest’s chest as he held her. Joaquin thought she might cry until she, too, died.
Now, he was the only one left. He would have to take care of her.
A month after they buried Jose, Joaquin and his mother left for El Paso. The priest had a sister who lived there, and he promised she would take them in. One night in December they swam across the river with a crowd of strangers.
The day had felt almost normal. They held hands during the matinee—something they had not done since they first moved in together. They had taken a walk after the movie, and they tried to laugh about things, but nothing seemed funny or amusing. The sun seemed hallow and fake, and the evening light in the apartment was as dull as Joaquin’s mood. The day was long, went on forever. Joaquin waited for it to end, but as night fell, he could not sleep. In bed, as he listened to Jake’s breathing, he leaned into his chest. He thought of his childhood sky, a sky as pure as anything he had ever seen. For an instant he smelled the earthen floor of the house where he was born. The smell of his lover’s skin made him think of rain in the desert. He wanted to go back there, to be buried there, to lie in that ground forever. “But who is left there to remember me?”
He thought of his father’s death, the house where he had lived with his brother and his mother, the arroyos where he learned to dream of water. He remembered the crude crucifix that hung above the bed he shared with his brother. He remembered the old church where the kind priest said Mass for the people of his village and the odor of candle wax and incense and dry adobe made him believe for an instant that he was back in the place of his genesis. He wasn’t sleepy or tired and he was happy to lie there holding on to the only human being left in the world who would mourn his passing. The thought occurred to him that he would never live to be forty. His hands would never feel Jake’s skin again. He fought the sadness. Why should he be sad? He was sick of the world, sick of the way it lived and behaved, sick of the attitudes it fostered—rewarding those that least merited reward, sick of the way it treated those who wanted nothing more than to live simply, sick, sick at the fact that the world he knew had always made him feel like a freak because he had been born poor and Mexican and gay, sick of being hated, sick of his body’s disease. What was there to be sad about? Why should he be sad to leave a physical world when it had exiled him from the very beginning. “Why do I want to live? Mama, tengo miedo. Mama,” He shook in the darkness, and everything became so dark that he felt he had fallen into a hole where no light could ever enter. There would be nothing forever. It was as if he had died and he could no longer feel Jacob next to him. He was alone in the coffin dark. Then, Joaquin saw a dark-skinned woman surrounded by light coming toward him, closer and closer. She sat at the edge of the bed. “M’ijo, no tengas miedo.” She touched his shoulder and whispered his name. “Joaquin, no llores.” She spoke in the language of the desert—in a voice he had not heard in twelve years. He had whispered in her ear, “Mama, no tengas miedo.” She had come back to return the gift. Her touch was as warm as he remembered it. She sat for a long time, and he was happy staring into her eyes and began thinking he had died and gone to a perfect place. Then she was gone. The room was again dimly lit with the lights of the city. He could feel Jacob’s skin; he could hear his heart pounding and he was glad to be breathing, happy to have lived. He wanted to wake Jacob; he wanted to make love to him; he wanted to feel every part of him while he was still able to feel him. “Jacob, wake up,” he whispered. “Please wake up.”
15
DIEGO WALKED BACK toward the corner of Fifth and Oregon. By now, Crazy Eddie should be preaching, he thought. From two blocks away he could see Crazy Eddie’s hands flying in the air like pigeon’s wings. As he moved closer he could see the Bible in his hand, he could see the words come from his lips, lips that resembled Mary’s; “He has shown his might with his arm; he has scattered the proud in their conceit … The rich he has sent away empty.” His eyes flashed like firecrackers and the veins in his neck popped out making him look as if he were about to explode. “Do you hear me?” he yelled as he pointed at the sky, “Do you hear? He speaks to us. He gives us his word.”
The young cholos sitting across the street yelled things at him, and began throwing rocks. Diego caught sight of one of the boys’ lips as he was saying; “We don’t hear God, old man, all we hear is you. Shut up—shut the hell up!” The boys who sat next to him laughed.
But Eddie kept preaching. Diego turned to watch him as he lifted up his Bible: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel for he has come to his people and set them free.”
One of the cholos stepped up to him and began yelling in his face. Diego couldn’t see everything the cholo was saying, but he was able to read, “Shut the fuck up before someone locks you up for good.”
“And God will rescue me,” Crazy Eddie yelled back.
“And who’s gonna rescue us from you, old man? Who’s gonna set us free from all the pinche locos?”
Eddie shook his head and kept reading from the Bible. “Every valley shall be filled, every mountain shall be leveled …”
The young men sitting on the street corner shared a cigarette and passed it between themselves. Diego watched to see if anything else was going to happen. “Why doesn’t God level the migra or the fucking police?” one of them yelled. “Tell me why—tell me that!” The young man stared at Eddie and turned away from him. He said something to one of his friends, and for a long time they all sat there quietly. Diego stared at all of them: the five youths sharing a cigarette and sitting at last in silence, the people passing, and Crazy Eddie reading the Bible, He pulled out a dollar from his pocket and pulled at Eddie’s sleeve. Eddie stopped his reading and stared at him, “Here,” Diego wrote on his pad, “this is for you. I believe.” Crazy Eddie smiled and put the dollar in his pocket. He took a deep breath and began preaching again.
Diego began walking toward Sunset Heights. The day had grown too hot—the morning had melted away. As Diego approached his house, he saw what looked like the figure of an old woman: a shadow with a dress draped over a form. The form was sitting on the steps to his apartment house. As he walked closer he thought the woman was the landlord’s wife who often sunned herself—fully clothed—on the steps of the house. Moving closer, he realized the woman sitting on his steps was Luz. It was strange to see her sitting in front of his house since she had never once visited him in the few years that they had known each other, though she had always known exactly where he lived.
She saw Diego moving toward her; she waved her arms and appeared to yell something. Diego could see her Mayan lips move, but he was not close enough to guess what she had said. He motioned to her and pointed at his ear. She laughed—and as Diego moved up to where she was sitting he
took out his pad and wrote: “So what brings you to my neighborhood? I thought you hated Sunset Heights.”
“I never said I hated Sunset Heights. It’s nice here, Diego.” He smiled to himself; she did not seem to remember saying how much she detested this neighborhood. “And what do you mean ‘what brings me here?’ I’m waiting for you, pendejo—what else would I be doing sitting on your front steps?”
Diego laughed and wrote: “Twice in one day, Luz! I don’t know if I can handle it!”
Luz smiled softly. “Twice in one day,” she repeated. “Well, good friends can see each other as often as they like. Don’t you agree, Dieguito?”
He nodded, but he knew Luz was not here simply to make small talk. There was something on her mind, something she wanted to talk about. “So,” Diego wrote, “are you here to take me to a late lunch?”
Luz looked at his pad and laughed. “No lunches, Dieguito, not today.” She stopped talking and was lost in her thoughts for a few moments. “Guess who I saw right after you left me at the bridge? Carlos. He says he’s going to Chicago, says he has a place to live with some people he knows, and he says he has someone who’s going to take him. He says maybe I should think about going with him.”
“Well,” Diego wrote, “are you thinking about going?” He stopped, then wrote: “What will you do in Chicago?”
“What the hell do I do here? I can be a maid anywhere, can’t I?”
“It seems like you want to go.”
She stared at Diego’s handwriting. She was quiet. “Give me one of your cigarettes.” Diego reached into his pocket, handed her one, put one in his own mouth, and lit both their cigarettes. Luz took a deep puff and exhaled the smoke slowly through her nose. “Ay, Dieguito, no se. I just don’t know. I’m tired of this city—I’m tired. I’m so damned tired I could lie down and die.”
“I thought when you got tired you only got madder.”
“God, Dieguito, you really are a pendejo. Do you believe everything I say?” She took another drag from her cigarette and said nothing. Both of them sat in the hot afternoon sun sweating and smoking their cigarettes. She grabbed Diego’s arm: “Diego,” she said slowly, “listen to me. Listen. There’s nothing in El Paso for me. My sons are gone, and neither of the bastards ever bother to write or send any money. Sometimes, I miss them—and I write to them, but nothing ever comes back. And you know something? They can go to hell along with everybody else. Malditos. Ungrateful pigs—that’s what I raised, and goddamnit, I don’t deserve to be treated like that. Diego, I want to go somewhere. Just somewhere, Dieguito.”