She willed the book back on the shelf. She wanted to leave, to rest. She was tired, and had become afraid, and she felt the need to get back. She was outside again, and as she hovered over the church, she imagined what the inside looked like, and she had the odd feeling that she had been in that church somewhere, perhaps in a dream, but the dream frightened her, and she did not want to think of what she had seen there, so she willed herself to move away from the church as quickly as possible. As she floated through the sky, she felt again as if she were a part of everything in the world that was not human. It was good to be a part of the sky.
In her apartment again, Lizzie stared at the body in the bathtub. She no longer felt indifference toward that shell of fragile bone and skin. She felt a great and sad love for it. She went near the body, and wanted to touch it. She willed to be a part of it again. She opened her eyes. She touched herself. She felt her wet hands wrinkled from soaking in the water. She rubbed them against her wet skin, shivered, and stared at herself. She felt heavy as she picked herself out of the tub. As she dried herself, Lizzie smelled soap and lilac. The maid in her childhood felt close, and she half-expected to hear Salvador’s voice reverberating through her body, “What’s happening to me? My God, what’s happening to me?”
8
ON WEEKENDS Diego slept late but always managed to wake in time to watch the sun come out. No Vicky’s on weekends, no dark kitchens, no smell of pine cleaner, no boss’s face to make him feel unworthy of breathing the air. On Saturdays, his body didn’t tremble as much; his inner earthquakes let his body rest.
He sat at his desk, which he had placed directly in front of his only window. He drank a second cup of coffee, letting the familiar bitterness seep into him as he watched the sun cast its light, creating pink and purple shadows on the Juárez mountains. He thought of Carlota’s jewels. He could almost see them sparkling in his hands, feel their hard surfaces almost melting against the touches of his fingers, see his own reflection in them. He dressed himself in a hurry, not caring or even noticing his body or his clothes. He did not take the time to smell himself and did not worry whether he needed a bath. He started walking toward the river—just like he did every Saturday. The walks toward the river were rituals he attended to as if he were an old priest saying Mass, an old priest who was no longer conscious of the sacredness or necessity of the act. Somehow the ritual simply helped to keep him alive.
The river on Saturdays was better than San Jacinto Plaza that sat in the center of downtown. He did not like San Jacinto Plaza anymore. He had liked it as a boy, but back then it had a fountain with alligators in it—alligators whom he had feared and loved. They did not belong and yet they were there. He felt close to those alligators as if they were personal pets. One Saturday night some drunk soldiers from Fort Bliss had managed to slip into the fountain and slit the throats of the sleeping alligators. After that, the park was never the same. And anyway, there were too many pigeons who did more shitting than flying and too many people asking him for cigarettes and money. He was tired of giving his cigarettes away to people he didn’t know—and there was no money to give them.
At the edge of Sunset Heights, Diego passed the steps that went nowhere. He supposed that the houses the steps led to had burned down. He pictured the fires in his mind, the flames lighting up the night like a huge candle with a crooked, wild wick. He wondered if anyone had died inside the burning houses. The people, perhaps not wanting to return to the memories, decided not to rebuild their houses and left the ruins, forgotten, at the top of the steps. They sat there, abandoned and noticed only by children and people who had nothing to do but explore. Diego climbed to the top of one set of steps and walked through the ruins. The bricks were so soft that they broke beneath him as he stepped. Weeds were growing everywhere. Some things can grow anywhere, he thought, even without rain. He saw crumpled rubbers where teenaged lovers had left them after sex. He tried to picture their awkward passions. Once he had caught a couple having sex here. He kicked the bricks beneath him and walked back down the stairs. For some reason, Diego could not pass by the steps that went nowhere without climbing them. It was another one of his rituals. Something in him half-expected to be surprised by something up there, but nothing was ever different, except that time when he’d seen the couple with no clothes. When he first moved to Sunset Heights, he had hoped someone would grow a garden where the houses used to be, but now he thought it had been a stupid, romantic idea. The only thing that had a right to grow here, he thought, were the weeds that needed no caring, that needed no rain. Now, he felt the steps should always lead to nothing.
He walked slowly toward the Santa Fe Bridge enjoying what was left of the cool. He passed the bright red warehouse where he bought his clothes for thirty-five cents a pound. He stood at the very top of the bridge where the American and Mexican flags flew next to each other. The wind wasn’t blowing today, but on some days the winds twisted the flags in every direction and they almost touched for a second in midair—they almost touched like dancers who reached endlessly for each other, dancers who knew they would never couple.
He looked down at the Rio Grande that looked impressive only on a map. The river was old and lazy. It was neither deep nor blue nor beautiful nor wide. It did not reflect the sky or the clouds—and if it reflected anything at all, it reflected the color of the mojados who had learned to cross it faster and safer than the cars that drove across the bridge. The muddy river was now completely tame, and whatever bed it made for itself, the part of it that ran through the cities of Juárez and El Paso had now been replaced by a bed of smooth, hard, gray cement. The river was poor like the people, Diego thought, and though there was nothing beautiful to see in its waters, he liked coming here to visit it. Something about the river made him feel as though he belonged.
He looked for Luz, who often came here on Saturdays. Like him, she was addicted to the river. She loved it even as she laughed at it, even as she spit at its poverty, at its insignificance. She was loo tired to clean houses six days a week, so on Saturdays, she rested and came to watch the river and speak to it. Diego caught sight of her as she sat next to an old man who had a porcelain bowl placed in front of him. He watched as she pulled out two quarters and placed it in the old man’s bowl. She said something to him and laughed. He laughed with her. Diego could watch her for hours, the way she carried herself, the way she made people seem so important. He knew she must have been very beautiful when she was younger—and even now she had the kind of face that made people want to stare. Luz looked up and saw him. She waved him to come closer. When he was next to her, she looked up at him from where she was sitting on the concrete walkway. She pressed her palm on the concrete next to her and patted it. Diego recognized it as an invitation for him to sit next to her. “¿Cómo estás, Dieguito?”
Diego smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“How long have you been standing there watching me? I don’t like to be watched. My first boyfriend used to follow me around—and watch. I hated that. It made me feel—I don’t know. I just didn’t like it.”
“I don’t follow you around, you know?” Diego wrote.
She nodded. “Sometimes, the past comes back just when you think it’s disappeared. Nothing ever disappears. I think we shrink when we get old because the years become so heavy—they don’t go away, they just twist us, bend us over until we can’t walk anymore.”
Diego nodded. He was afraid she would cry. He never knew what to do when people cried.
She placed her hand on his cheek. He thought of his mother.
She pulled her hand away and looked toward the immigration booths where border guards stopped people and asked their nationalities. “Well,” she said firmly, “they’re still trying to keep us out, aren’t they, my Diego?” She spoke English to him, and she always spoke clearly so Diego could read her lips—she never turned her back to him. She learned to read Diego’s handwriting as he wrote on his pad, so she could respond immediately to what he was
saying. Diego never minded that she looked over his shoulder when he wrote. He knew she was not a patient person, not the kind of person to wait for things to come to her—not even his notes. And besides, Diego liked that Luz was not afraid to get near enough to touch him.
Diego took out his pad and wrote: “Why do you always speak to me in English? I know Spanish just like you. I had a teacher who taught me to read in Spanish, I used to go to her house after school. She taught me to read books in Spanish. It took me a long time. I spent three summers in her house—every day. She was old and patient and good. She died. Speak to me in Spanish. I worked hard, Luz.”
Luz stared at his pad and grinned. “Yes, you’re very intelligent,” she said, “but I’m a U.S. citizen ¿que no?” Yes, Diego thought, that’s true. She was a U.S. citizen. He remembered how the first time they met she had told him she had decided to live in Juárez because it was cheaper, and he remembered smiling when she referred to herself as an expatriate.
“So what if you are a U.S. citizen,” Diego wrote, “Spanish is your first language. Why don’t you speak to me in your first language?”
Luz pointed her lips at him: “Because you can’t make fun of my accent and you can’t tell if I pronounce something the wrong way. Besides, I like to speak English—I just don’t want the gringos to know it.”
Diego smiled at her and wrote: “Why don’t you want gringos to know you like to speak English?” He wrote quickly and clearly. Luz leaned over his shoulder as he wrote and watched the clean words appear on the white paper.
“Because,” she said, “they already think English is better. Don’t you know that? They think English is the only language in the world. I hate that, Dieguito, I really hate that. I don’t want gringos to ever suspect I enjoy their language. No, I want to enjoy English in my own private way. I don’t have to yell about it. And, anyway, Spanish is the superior language.”
“Actually,” Diego wrote, “American Sign Language is the superior language.”
She nodded, but her nod was polite—without conviction—and Diego did not mistake her gesture as a sign of agreement. She didn’t believe what he had just written. She never did. “So Dieguito, when do you think they’re going to stop all this nonsense about borders?”
He shook his head and wrote: “About the time the river freezes over, which will be about the same time my boss gives me a raise.”
Luz laughed. “Look at that river. It’s dirty and small. They’ve taken all the fight out of it. I bet it was strong and beautiful once.” She laughed. “Strong and beautiful once—like me.” Sometimes, even Luz could not hide the sorrow she held within her like the root of a cactus held water. This is not what she had planned—this is not what she had wanted. Her mother had told her that her looks would save her from a common life—but her looks had not saved her from anything.
Diego watched her as she spoke of the river, her face sad and distant because she was not only speaking of the river, but of her own life, a life where more weeds had grown than flowers, a life with few choices, a life of too many regrets.
“… Oh, Diego I wish for so many things.” She stopped speaking and shook herself as if she were an old rug full of dust. “That poor goddamned river. You know, mi amor, I wish I understood why I loved it. It’s not a line on a map, you know. And it isn’t a border. You call this poor excuse for a river a border? Ha!”
He wanted to tell her not to be sad. But she always picked herself up. “Keep fighting, Luz, just keep—”
She looked at him and smiled. She stared at his pad.
“I’ve heard they might build a wall,” he wrote.
“You’re deaf—you couldn’t have heard a damn thing.”
“Don’t be so literal, Luz.”
“I just like to argue with you, amor. And you shouldn’t be listening to talk about walls.”
“But I read about a ‘Tortilla Curtain.’”
“Tortilla Curtain my brown ass, Dieguito. The gringos like to talk. If they built a wall, they couldn’t chase us down anymore. They’d have to find a new sport.”
“You should never never underestimate la migra. If they want a wall someday, they’ll build it.”
She looked at Diego’s pad and laughed. “You’re damn smart, my Diego. Maybe you’re right. But if the time ever comes, we’ll just have to fight them.”
“With what?”
“With out bodies, with our voices, with our prayers.”
Diego smiled at her and nodded. “You’re crazy if you think anyone’s ever going to listen to our prayers.”
“We’ll make them listen. And you’re right, I’m crazy—damn crazy. So what? All the sane people I know are bores, do you hear me, Diego? My mother told me never to trust a sane man. ‘Get rid of those kinds of men,’ she said, ‘they’re not good for nothing—not even sex.’ She said that sanity was like happiness: Nobody knew what it was.”
“Your mother sounds like she read Hemingway,” he wrote.
She threw her head up and cackled. “No, she never read that stupid American. You’re the only one I know who has time to read that stuff, Dieguito. You and your library. You should stop all that bullshit, Dieguito. Books aren’t good for you. What the hell do they teach you? I’ll tell you what they teach you: they teach you to want things you can’t have …” Diego smiled to himself as she spoke. He knew she herself had her own small library in her house. Sometimes she was all show. “… No, Dieguito, books aren’t good for you. Stick to work on your suicide letter. Are you almost finished?”
“I’m thinking of throwing out the part about my mother.” She watched his hands glide across the paper.
“No, no, no, Diego, you got it all wrong. No seas pendejo, leave your mother in. She deserves some credit, you know? The women always get left out. Do we need to grow dicks to get a good part in people’s stories?”
“It’s not a story, Luz, it’s a letter.”
“It’s all the same thing, Diego, trust me. Give your mother her due. She gave you life, no?”
“I don’t think she’d like what I wrote about her. It’s not the kind of credit she would have wanted.”
“Very neat handwriting,” she said, “very bold—like a true American.” She clapped her hands and laughed. When she’d finished laughing she wrinkled her forehead and looked at Diego seriously. “Look, about your mother, well forget your mother, Diego. Stop your worrying. Why are you worried about what your mother will think? Dios la tenga en paz, but she’s dead.” She crossed herself and though her lips did not move, it seemed to Diego that she was smiling. “Ay, Dieguito! You don’t know by now that mothers aren’t perfect? You feel sad for yourself because your mother wasn’t a copy of some idea you got in your head? You think there’s a perfect mother out there who behaves like the Virgin Mary? Not even the Virgin acted like men think she acted. You think you were cheated because your mother was human? You’re like my sons, you really are, my Diego. Well, you’re a man—you can’t help it—and once you discover that your mothers had sex in order to have you, then you turn around and look at us like we’re all whores. ¡Pendejos! Forgive your mother for whatever she did, Dieguito, forgive her—and leave her in your letter. It’s the way you feel, so just leave everything the way it is.”
Diego nodded, and wondered who taught her to see things so clearly. It was not a gift he had been bom with.
“So when are you going to finish the letter, my Diego?”
“When they move the Statue of Liberty to the Rio Grande.” He smiled at her.
“Well,” she nodded, “then you have some time. Have you thought about how you’re going to end it?”
“The letter or my life?”
“Your life, not the letter. To hell with the letter.”
He nodded and wrote: “Maybe I’ll throw myself off this bridge.”
She let out a cackle. Diego stared at her face and could tell she was laughing hard—even for her. “Pendejo. You have an American sense of humor. You think you’d die fro
m jumping off this bridge? I’ll tell you, Dieguito, they have real bridges in California, but this bridge here ain’t shit—it isn’t high enough for suicide.”
“I don’t intend to break my neck,” he wrote, “I intend to drown.”
“Diego, you think you’d drown in this river? Nothing could drown down there. You don’t even have to be Jesus Christ to walk across it. You might as well drown in your bathtub. And besides that, the Border Patrol would save your brown ass. Those green uniforms would be all over the river saving your worthless life from drowning even though they don’t give a devalued peso for your soul. They’d save you just so the whole damned city could see what good Joes they are, and there you’d be, making them look like heroes. And believe me, my Diego, with your luck you’d wind up breaking all your fingers and wouldn’t even be able to write. What would you do then?”
Diego smiled at her. “Maybe, But I’d be dead by the time the migra found me. I’d drown before they could reach me and make it look like they hadn’t tried hard enough to save me. It’s worth a try.” He was writing faster than usual. “I might even make the newspaper and get my letter published or something. And besides, it would make an interesting grave—the river—don’t you think?” His hand moved across the note pad, smoothly, evenly, each letter, perfect.
“It’s already a grave.” She threw her head up and laughed.
Diego smiled. He wondered to himself if she really believed all of the things she said. Maybe she just wanted to believe them. Diego loved watching her lips and reading what she had to say, but it made him sad because he felt people would always find a way of stepping on each other. Nothing would ever change. But he needed Luz, and he needed to read her lips, and he was glad she liked to fight.