The nation is called the U.S.A. What is the name of the Mexican locked in that prison? Can I comfort him from my own wandering, my dear, can I speak of my Spanish father killed by the Falange, can I speak of my mother fleeing the Italian Fascists? Can I speak in the name of my own orphanhood, sent as a girl to Veracruz in a ship loaded with orphans? Can I speak in the name of all this endless moving around of a humanity erring and errant, fleeing and fleet, incapable of remaining still because it believes that immobility is the opposite of freedom?
We are free because we move. We leave a wound called solitude and travel to another wound called death. There is a crossroads between the point of departure and the port of arrival. On that carrefour, my adored child, we always meet the other, the one who is not like us, and we find ourselves obliged to understand that if we move and meet one another, we ought to love one another on account of the contrast. Did you feel that contrast with your killer? Did he feel it with you, my love? Or do we perhaps go out into the world to fatally choose evil?
Fatally, because at the crossroads, we meet the other person and act on that person, giving free rein to our freedom, which is always the freedom to affect the lives of others. Perhaps José Nicasio, when he saw you that afternoon in Monte Albán, had a secret fear of not being free with you, betraying his freedom if he let you pass. He had to act before you, with you, but he didn’t know how. You gave him the opportunity. You were afraid of him.
You decided for him, my adored child. He wanted to choose another person as a sign of his freedom. Except on that afternoon there was no one else but you. If José Nicasio hadn’t approached you, he would have betrayed himself. He lived for that moment, do you understand? Imagine him alone before an alien, forbidden person, daring to look at her in search of a smile. Instead, he saw only the fear in your eyes. He saw the evil, Alessandra. Your fear of him was evil for him. He lived his life to win respect. Above all, the respect of not being seen as a man who was frightening, evil, hidden, ugly, Indian.
If he hadn’t killed you, José Nicasio would have betrayed himself. He had to kill you to know that he existed. That he culminated his life saying,
“Don’t be afraid of me. Please. Don’t give me fear. Give me love.”
And you gave him fear.
He killed you out of fear of himself, of his effort to come out of obscurity. You betrayed him with your rejection, my dear.
Now, kneeling before the urn that holds your remains, I tell you that perhaps you didn’t know how to remove the fear from your consciousness. Your intelligence, so brilliant, had that enormous flaw. You were afraid. It’s my fault. You gave me so much. If I can write these lines, it is because by educating you, I educated myself. But I, because of protective love, because of my protective devotion, could not tell you in time:
Don’t be afraid. A day will come when intelligence isn’t enough. You have to know how to love.
My dear daughter, have mercy on me.
This is my prayer.
I will live transforming your death into my reconciliation with the world you left me when you died.
Chorus of the Perfect Wife
before anything else exfoliation
hydration
elimination of impurities
so the bridegroom doesn’t find a single imperfection
the scrub and you’re ready to try on your wedding dress
choose: fairy-tale dream of gold or the goddess of spring
goodbye to singleness
all your girlfriends
are drinking coffee martinis
they’re offering you a kit spa a kit moon a kit honey a honeymoon kit
they’re giving you a bronzing express so you don’t arrive white as a ghost
they’re reading your cards pure good luck a hundred years of life eight children twenty grandchildren
you’ll outlive your husband
waah waah
she cries alone in the church
don’t listen to the priest’s sermon against abortion against the pill against condoms pro-life
forget about the epistle of melchor woman is weak she owes obedience man is
strong man commands
you just hear the DJ at the banquet singing I will always love you
you just went into raptures in the magic garden of your wedding banquet
everything a dream everything so in mirrors instead of tablecloths hung with Swarovski
magnums of champagne seviche of mango rolls of pork iguana ice cream
cactus cake
the superatmosphere the blowout plenty to drink a blast
waah waah
the golden couple
we don’t stop dancing
getting frisky
lots of kissing and cuddling
everything so in
I will always love you
put on a cherub face
lucky you your fiancé I mean husband I mean monkey hairy beast horrible King Kong
mama mamamama mamama
allons enfants de la patrie
a photo sitting on the toilet
perverted prick
we’re going to Cancún
The Mariachi’s
Mother
1. You know her. Nobody knows her better than you. But now you wouldn’t recognize her. How could she be? Doña Medea Batalla stripped? A mature woman—sixty, seventy years old—naked in a police cell? The gray-haired grandmother without clothes except for a diaper pinned on her, you say? Her chest defeated as if by a too frequent haughtiness? Thin strong arms accustomed to work and not to penitence?
What work, you ask? In the neighborhood, many occupations are attributed to Doña Mede, who begins her back-and-forth at the market very early in the day. She wants to be the first to choose the potatoes and dry chilis and grasshoppers and locusts in season. Then she withdraws to her one-story house between a tire-repair shop and a hardware store, at the rear of a parking garage, and takes the real treasure from her rebozo. A snake rattle. Doña Mede knows she survives thanks to the rattle, which is a potion for long life. Each snake has five rattles. With two doses a week, you enjoy good health.
This is a secret you may not have known, and I’m telling you now so you can begin to understand. Because in the case of Doña Mede, everything is supposition and guesswork, since she makes a point of keeping—concealing—her secrets inside her rebozo, allowing neighborhood gossip to fly. They say she’s a seamstress. Haven’t you seen her go into the house with a bundle of clothes and then come out with packages that could be shirts or blouses or skirts? Or she’s a potter. Have you heard her turn the wheel and then go out to wash the clay from her hands at the faucet outside her house? Or a midwife. Where does she go in such a hurry when a little kid from the neighborhood comes running and says come, Doña Medea, come now, hurry, my sister’s yelling and says you should come and help her? Or a witch, a Protestant preacher, a procurer for nonexistent local millionaires, and more miracles are hung on her than the ones she gives thanks for with constant special ex-votos to the Virgin here in the Church of the Immaculate Conception.
A straw-colored braid adorns the nape of her neck and her back. You remember that when she was a young woman, her hair was black and pulled back tight, hanging down to her buttocks and driving the men wild. Now they say she has one foot in the grave. Though they’ve been saying that for many years.
“Doña Mede has one foot in the grave.”
“She’ll go flying to the cemetery.”
“Doña Mede’s ready to breathe her last.”
“One of these days Doña Mede will kick the bucket.”
“Death already rented her body.”
“The next world is in her eyes.”
It isn’t true. You know Doña Medea doesn’t have death in her eyes, she has sadness. You know the lady’s comings and goings don’t reveal her real concern. She has another, secret desire. Does it have to do with the men she knew in her life? Who knows if you know. Doña Medea has pure d
esolation in her eyes.
You’ve heard there were men in Doña Medea’s life. But you never saw their faces, and neither did anybody else. One thing is sure: This woman lost all her men in cheap pulque taverns.
It was her destiny. And destiny is like a hare. It jumps out when you least expect it. And nothing less than the rabbit of fatality jumped out at Doña Medea in the taverns. This is a crowded district, you know that very well. It’s as if lives become confused here. Names are lost. Men change their lives and their names without having to or being afraid to. Like movie stars, wrestlers in masks, criminals. El Santo. El Floridito. El Pifas. El Tasajeado. Evil names, all of them. El Cacomixtle. But then, like compensation, there are all the blessed names. Holy Child of Atocha, Christ of the Afflicted, Virgin of Remedies.
That’s how flashes are given out, because for Doña Mede, flashes were what people called themselves or what they were called by others. Flashes in the city. Sudden flare-ups. Grass fires.
“And how did you get such a strange name, Doña Medea?”
“Because of Empress Carlotta.”
“What does she have to do with it?”
“My mother saw a movie with an actress who always played Carlotta.”
“What was her name?”
“Medea. Empress Medea de Navarra.”
“Isn’t it Novara?”
“Navarra, Novara, at this late date, what difference does it make? We all have the names that somebody else dreams up for us. That’s God’s truth!”
Men change their names and their lives. That’s why it’s strange that all of Doña Mede’s loves have been pulqueros. Not exactly the owners but the victims of pulque taverns. In La Solitaria she lost a husband among the silver mirrors and wooden barrels. In La Bella Bárbara another man drowned in pulque mixed with oats. And they say a third husband was swallowed up by a mixture of lukewarm eggs, cascabel chili, and watered milk at the pulque tavern El Hijo de los Aztecas.
That’s why nobody knows the father of Doña Mede’s only son. The mariachi.
2. Do you know why Doña Medea Batalla finds herself in the police station, dressed only in a diaper? Because, you’ll say, that’s just what she needed. Just that? It isn’t that her life was so full of affliction. Doña Medea, except for her amorous adventures in the pulque taverns, was always a tidy woman. Her day usually begins with a visit to the markets. She spends the entire morning looking without buying, choosing without paying, sensing that the noisy peace of the old city market-places compensates her for life, or at least calms her curiosity about living. She walks up to the stalls, and modern toys, the Barbie dolls, the Dragon Balls, the SpongeBobs, make her laugh. She recalls with affection the dolls in the old days. The bullfighter puppets in their pink stockings, the Mamerto cowboys with their big mustaches and huge hats, the fat Torcuata ladies in their wide skirts and rolled-up braids.
She asks them to play vinyl records of the old boleros and rancheras. And against all her feelings to the contrary, she wants to get angry, she wants to cry, she finally gives in, the mariachi music traps her, silences her, makes her cry, and enrages her, too.
To calm down, she goes up to a food stand, and as she eats, she airs recollections that are very much appreciated by the restaurant owners who offer her food free of charge while Doña Medea talks about the past. It’s as if a great river of memories flows without ever stopping, because in the faces of the new cooks and servers, Doña Medea sees her own youth and senses the same feelings of love, sadness, hope, rancor, and tradition that are recounted in song lyrics. Moles, pozoles, enchiladas. Feeling nourishes, food is felt. That happens, as you know very well. Good Lord!
Doña Medea moves through the market and doesn’t buy anything because she feels everything that comes in through her eyes is hers. That’s why, as far as she’s concerned, there are no objects without a price. Everything that is used contains a lost value that returns in a magical, unexpected way to a shopwindow with dusty wedding dresses, a record of ranchera music, an exvoto giving thanks to the Virgin for having saved us from certain death . . . She is devoted to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and every day she visits the small church presided over by the Mother of God. You know her, and you know she’s not just any devout old woman. Her devotion has a mission. Why does she enter on her knees? Why does she light candles? Why, in short, does she pray to the Virgin? And why does she read the ex-votos with so much attention, as if she were hoping to find in one of them—only one—the message she is waiting for, the telegram from heaven, the announcement that the Virgin sends to her and no one else?
She stops to read that ex-voto. A certain death. Have you noticed how the undertaker at the funeral parlor on the corner salivates as he watches her walk by? She laughs at this. The undertaker wants to frighten her, Doña Medea explains. He’s measuring her for the coffin. But she still has a good while to go before she lies down in a casket.
“Don’t be such a meddler,” she says to the undertaker.
“And don’t you be so deferential.” And with a smile, “Listen to me. Come and see me. I ought to take your measurements once and for all.”
“Don’t be a fool. Death doesn’t matter. The terrible thing is dying.”
“I’m here waiting for you, Doña Medea. You should take more precautions.”
“Well, just be very patient, because when you come with your little box, I’ll already be resurrected.”
The truth is that Doña Medea doesn’t want to surrender to eternal darkness just like that. The guacamole doesn’t drip out of her taco. She sees other women to compare herself to and guess their destinies. She classifies them accurately. Some seem like beasts of burden. Others are thought of as clever. Doña Medea can smell from a distance the predatory women who conspire all day and the ones who seem so resigned they don’t even complain.
The entire neighborhood is a swarm of ambitions, desires to leave, to get out of the swamp of the city. That’s what you say, Señor.
“A city without hope, destroyed inside and out, but fed by illusions that, with luck, allow the luxury of being more abused than a fatality that gnaws away at everything until it leaves the residents in the neighborhood with no recourse except crime. Violence as the final refuge of hope, no matter how strange this sounds.”
“Suddenly, violence is afraid of Doña Medea. Because she has constructed her entire life as a defense against two things.”
“What are they?”
“One, the throb of violence she feels all around her, which she defeats with her ordinary routine.”
“And the other?”
“Ah, that’s her secret. For now all you need to know is that she sleeps with the Picot Songbook as her pillow. She believes the words come in through the hole that Don Lupino, the druggist, says we have at the base of our skull, and in this way the danger vanishes like the snake rattle in her mouth. What she’s really afraid of, without understanding it completely, is the urban wave that can wipe out everything, licentiate, drag her to a destiny that isn’t hers, implicate her in mistakes she hasn’t made . . .”
Until she ends up in diapers in the hands of the police, a woman who has always gotten along wonderfully with the gendarmes who need, who knows, to know a person like her who can give them back their confidence in life. Oh!
She says all this to herself, and you recriminate her, and rightly so.
Violence appeared some time ago in Doña Medea’s house. Sorrow treacherously knocked on her door. With warbling knuckles and a goldfinch’s voice. Pure farce. She already carries violence inside herself, with no need for everything that has happened.
Violence at home.
And violence on the street.
Sorrow everywhere.
3. That’s why the old woman moves around the markets and the food stands, that’s why she chats with marketwomen and policemen. That’s why she listens to the music of Agustín Lara and José Alfredo Jiménez. In order to believe that life in the neighborhood has a solution. That it’s the sa
me today as it was yesterday. And if it isn’t, then to exorcize the threat she feels on her skin and in her bones, everything that exists here and that she doesn’t want to admit, as if a good yellow mole would be enough to establish joy and serenity in life. As if, by naming them, the murmuring of a bolero could chase away all the evils of existence . . .
Well, it turns out that Doña Medea Batalla is a woman with antennae, and she knows very well that not only unpleasant but downright wicked things are going on. Behind the spotless facade she has erected, there is a good deal of filth and suffering and crime and resentment. She knows that if some have gotten away from here, others have remained, making a virtue of necessity, whether it’s the crook who finds a way to get a rake-off from misfortune or the scoundrel on the bottom who decides to be smarter than the scoundrels on top.
“Will you do a job for me?”
“A rival in love?”
“No, an enemy in business.”
“Tell your son to take the tied-up dog for a walk.”
“That’s the signal?”
“Walk the mascots.”
“Fear doesn’t ride a donkey.”
“Zero tolerance?”
“What do you mean? Zero remorse.”
“What did you say? I can’t hear you.”
“Clear up your voice with some mallow tea.”
“Ah, now I understand you.”
“Really?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Just don’t torture yourself.”
“Sure. Progress is slow.”
“Isn’t it?”
“And never walk under trees at night.”
“It’s driving me crazy.”
Of course she understands all this. That’s exactly why she is the way she is, does what she does. To live a life different from everybody else’s. To believe that even though her example of charitable availability benefits no one, at least it creates something like an aura of kindly normality in a neighborhood with no standard but evil.