“I’m glad you weren’t here. It was bad.” She looked around. “You don’t need this stuff. It’s better you have your world far away from here.” She thought for a moment. “Sorry I drunk texted you.”
He patted her back. “Made me feel special.”
Little Angel had been terrified of Braulio. The kid had been skinny, but muscled like Bruce Lee. Sometimes he’d had a look like a Doberman, trembling before it attacked.
“Is it nice up there where you live?” Minnie asked.
“It’s beautiful, yeah,” he said. “And Bigfoot lives there.”
“You crack me up, Tío.” She hugged him with one arm. “I hate this town sometimes,” she said.
“Come to Seattle.”
“Nah. This is home. I belong here.”
They turned away.
“Who’s gonna run things if I go?” she said.
“There is that.”
“Tell you what, though,” she said. “I wish my big bro was here. The biggest bro. He and Daddy don’t like each other right now.”
Little Angel looked at her.
“Yndio,” she said. “He made…lifestyle choices.”
“I see.” But he didn’t, not really. Little Angel forgave himself for not remembering the details, if he’d ever heard them. He didn’t want to hear them.
But apparently Minnie wasn’t done with him. She produced her cell phone. “Check out his Facebook, Tío,” she said. She opened the profile page. The photo was a picture of Marilyn Manson from a few years back in his full cross-dressing outfit with a pair of rubber breasts. The name listed was Yndio Geronimo. Not sure how to respond, Little Angel said, “Uh, wow.”
“Right?” said Minnie. “But read what it says.”
Non-cisgendered, non-heteronormative cultural liberation warrior.
“That’s my bro.”
“Minnie, I’m not even sure what all that means. But I can see why your father can’t deal with it.”
“You think Dad has problems with it? You should ask my mom. She acts like he’s dead to her. She makes believe she doesn’t even miss him. Then we sneak out to eat pancakes with him so Daddy don’t know.”
He tried to come up with avuncular wisdom and ended up making a whee sound, then clearing his throat.
Frankly, Little Angel had barely registered Yndio’s presence. Neither of those two boys had seemed like real family to him. And when Yndio drifted in and out of the mix over the years, Little Angel had barely noticed. Bad uncle, he thought.
He watched Minnie walk over to her man and take his arm. He didn’t remember if they were married or not.
Little Angel went to the back of the crowd and assumed his position. El Yndio, he thought. Some kind of actor, or model. Hair to his ass, that much Little Angel remembered. He had given the kid Bowie records. Big Angel and Perla hadn’t liked that. He suddenly wondered if he had been a catalyst for this sexual revolution. And if he had been, was it a good thing or a bad thing?
A family inheritance, he thought. Endless drama. This was why he lived in Seattle. Family. It was all too complicated.
* * *
Big Angel whispered to his mother, “Forgive me if I have no tears to spare for you, Mother. I am down to my last ones. I know you understand.”
rain
Most mourners were jammed under the tent. They pressed forward to lay a hand on the blue vase of ashes, sitting on a small folding platform. Beautiful wreaths surrounded the open hole. More were coming—husbands of the various ladies trudged along carrying the flowers from the Bavarian chapel. A UPS man hauled out wreaths delivered from Mexico. No priest, though.
There was a small blue tarp over the raw dirt pile. La Minnie came to it, wiping away tears. She was as beautiful as the Angels had ever seen her. Her dude stood awkwardly behind her, hands clasped in front of his zipper as if he needed to pee.
Little Angel saw it even if they didn’t: she was the new backbone of the family. She was wearing a black and blue outfit, and her hair was a cascade of curls and waves, and her nails were two-toned. She was saying “Dios te bendiga, Grandma” to the urn. Her guy stared at her like he’d been hit with a chair in a wrestling match. The Look of Love.
Big Angel watched. He couldn’t remember the guy’s name. What the hell? He’d known that guy for years. Then he realized he couldn’t remember the name of the guy on TV either. That black guy on the nightly news. With the glasses. And he couldn’t remember the name of Perla’s sister Lupita’s pinche Americano husband in the fuchsia shirt. Christ. Sorry, Lord.
He cast about, surveilling the crowd. The girls had mostly come in high heels. They were sinking into the mud, picking up fallen leaves with their heels like groundskeepers in parks with spike sticks. Lupita unwittingly displayed three leaves mounted at fetching angles upon her left shoe.
He noticed some of the women were standing on the flat headstones to keep from sinking into the lawn. He shook his head. He imagined dead men lying beneath them, looking up their skirts.
La Gloriosa stood far back under her own umbrella in reasonable flats and a black Burberry overcoat. Huge French sunglasses. Slightly angry. Weeping softly. She wept for them all. Wept for herself. There was a grave about a hundred yards from this family plot that she dared not visit. She didn’t even look in that direction. Yes, Braulio was a great tragedy, but he wasn’t the only one to die that night. She turned her back to that other grave. Then withstood the full assault of guilt and shame at her cowardice. She watched Little Angel. She had always thought he was a pretty boy. Mexican women, she reminded herself, women of a certain age, could not resist blue eyes. She curled her lip. Estúpida, she thought. It was only her broken heart wanting what it didn’t need.
He was flirting with her, she thought. Todavía lo tienes, she told herself. She tugged the coat tighter—old curves, maybe, but still curves. Whenever she glanced at him, she caught his eyes turning away, like she’d interrupted his staring. What a child. Any real man would lock eyes with her and make her blush. And once she’d blushed, he’d come stand beside her.
She wanted him to claim her. Just for the afternoon. Not leave her out here alone and wet like some bedraggled puppy.
There was a time when they all would have been at her feet. She could have kicked each one away. The least he could do now was to offer her his arm and accompany her. She shook out her hair. In case he looked again.
* * *
Middle brother Julio César and his djinn of a wife, Paz, stood beside sister MaryLú—César standing guard between the warring women. A one-man DMZ. His siblings never stopped calling him Donald Duck—it was an old joke. He couldn’t help the sound of his voice.
It was a toss-up whether the women could make it through the burial ceremony without fighting. Whenever Paz leaned over to cast a poisonous glance at César’s big sister, César gallantly moved forward and blocked the eye punch with his chin. His exquisite second ex-wife stood apart with his sons and didn’t look at him. The first wife? On a ranch somewhere in Durango. Big Angel saw all this, and he saw his brother’s thoughts etched on his face: What the hell was I thinking? Too bad for you, Big Angel thought. I stayed with my Flaca the whole time. He held his chin up.
He had already bought a double plot not far from Mamá’s. On the other side of the little maple tree shading her. Beside Braulio. He and Perla would lie together. So, no peeking up skirts for him. FLAQUITO Y FLAQUITA the stone would say, with their names and dates beneath. Perla intended, however, to lie about her birth date when they did her stone.
They would spend forever side by side. And the rest of his fallen children would one day slumber around them all, a constellation of extinguished stars.
* * *
Lalo stepped over to Little Angel. “S’up, Tío?” he whispered.
“Doing my duty.”
“I hear that.”
“She was good to me. Your grandma used to tell me ‘I am your mother number two.’”
Lalo did a little Snagglepuss
laugh from the side of his mouth, tiny ratchets of appreciation: skitch-skitch-skitch.
“I didn’t ever meet your moms, did I?”
“Ah no.”
“She white.”
“As can be. So, you all right?”
“Yeah, Tío. Large and in charge.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” Little Angel enthused with imagined barrio brio.
“Yo, Tío. Where’s your wife at?”
“Gone.”
“Like gone gone? Or dead?”
“Gone. Her and all my furniture.”
“Dang. She white.”
“Yes.”
“Son,” said Lalo, “go brown next time. Don’t be no race traitor.” Skitch-skitch-skitch. “Down and brown!” Lalo nudged him with his elbow.
“Órale,” Little Angel said, for what else could he say?
Lalo laughed softly and knocked knuckles with him. He pulled up his sleeve and showed him the POPS tattoo.
Little Angel nodded sagely. “I should get one of those,” he said.
“Yours will say ‘bro.’”
They watched the sad crowd.
“This family,” Little Angel noted, “sure does talk a lot. I can’t keep track of what they’re saying. Or who they are.” He showed Lalo his notebook, which greatly amused his nephew.
“Talk, yeah,” he finally said to his uncle. “Talk’s all we got.” With that, Lalo went back to his bodyguard position behind the wheelchair.
* * *
There came a little bustle, the crowd parted, and poor Ookie Contreras stumbled out. He still played with Barbie dolls, most of them naked and some beheaded. Ookie was in a huge suit jacket somebody had given him. A brown fedora from some ancient tío, cocked against the rain. He could have been thirteen, and he could have been seventy. His eyes were crossed. Little scraggly pubic chin beard. They called him Ookie because he could never say “cookie.” And that homie loved a cookie. But he was infamous in the neighborhood for creeping into people’s houses, looking for Legos to steal. Ookie loved Legos more than he loved Oreos or headless Barbies.
He stepped up to the urn. “Gramma,” he said. “You be the greatest gramma anybody ever seen.” He looked around at the crowd. “Right?” he said.
“Right!” homies shouted.
“Did I do good?”
“Good job, Ookie!” Big Angel called. “We are proud of you, mijo!”
Inspired, Ookie took off his hat. “Big Angel,” he cried. “You the best Big Angel I ever seen. Sorry you got to die!”
Stunned silence. A cough.
“We all have to die, Ookie,” Big Angel said. “But not today.”
Ookie smiled. “Was she my gramma?” he said.
“No, Ookie,” said La Minnie.
“Am I your cousin?”
“Neighbors, Ookie.”
Ookie pumped his fist one time. Then remembered to wipe a pretend tear from his face before he wandered off.
“Foxy lady,” he said. “Purple haze.”
Little Angel allowed himself to breathe. Another disaster averted. Family was too much responsibility. That thousand-mile buffer zone was the only thing that worked.
An actual grandson urged his fourteen-year-old daughter forward, and she played a song on her violin. The vida loca faction could not believe a homegirl played violin. They approved. That was badass right there. Her dad had pushed her into it because he wanted her to join a mariachi group. But she wanted to play classical and had managed to get into her school’s orchestra. Debussy gave her tingles, not Selena. The vatos would kill for her. It was the college kids, all ironic and hipster, who snickered at every sour note.
“Beautiful, mija,” Minnie called.
They clapped.
A group of men from the family stepped up and sang a tremulous ballad that made everybody choke up. They all had to look away. They all stared at the rain. They held one another’s hands.
“Shit’s grim,” noted Lalo, who did not enjoy crying.
Big Angel looked behind him, trying to find his baby brother.
Lots of the youngsters were in the New American Pose: heads bowed, hands at mid chest, looking like monks at prayer, texting their asses off on their smartphones. They snuck selfies and posted them to their social media: ME, AT MY ABUELA’S FUNERAL. People with names like La Wera and Viejo Bear were saying things like SO FUKN SORRY, MIJA!:-(
Big Angel found Little Angel. He was also texting.
* * *
4:48 p.m.
Back at the house. How could you end a whole era and bury a century of life and be home before suppertime? Big Angel could not reconcile himself to this dirty deal they had all been dealt. Death. What a ridiculous practical joke. Every old person gets the punch line that the kids are too blind to see. All the striving, lusting, dreaming, suffering, working, hoping, yearning, mourning, suddenly revealed itself to be an accelerating countdown to nightfall.
When you had seventy years ahead of you, nothing mattered, though you thought it all mattered greatly. But you didn’t really feel the pressing need to do anything about it. Suddenly, though, there comes a birthday when you think: I have twenty years at best. And those years slide into the dark until you think: I have fifteen. I have ten. I have five. And your wife tells you, “Live, don’t fret. You could be hit by a bus tomorrow! Nobody knows when the end comes.”
But you know she lies in the dark beside you counting the years she has left, even if she won’t admit it. Wondering if every twinge in her left shoulder is the final heart attack. And then you find that you have no years left. You have days.
That is the prize: to realize, at the end, that every minute was worth fighting for with every ounce of blood and fire. And the majority of them poured down the toilet, unheeded. He had seen only sixty-nine Christmas mornings. Goddamn it! Sorry, Lord. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
So you fill your hours with hubbub. Like now. The house seemed to be bulging elastically like an old cartoon—music and dust flying out through the gaping junctures of the bouncing, jiving walls.
Big Angel surveyed his domain.
* * *
The kids had paid for a tent of their own: a wedding reception company was spreading a white vinyl roof over Big Angel’s porch and part of his backyard on tall aluminum legs. They were setting up long folding tables. Folding chairs. In the open far back, a small stage with amps for various testimonials or impromptu song recitals. Under blue plastic tarps.
Cars were jammed all down the block, but there were always families gathering in the hood, so it was hard to tell who was there for Big Angel’s house and who was hanging down the block watching NFL highlights or having a tamale fest. The minivan was parked half in the driveway. They’d wheeled Big Angel in through the garage—Lalo didn’t like it because when they hit the remote, the whole front wall of his bedroom rose and exposed his bed and personal stuff to the street. There were usually a couple of trucks in the driveway, so nobody really saw his small empire. But his Chargers posters fell down.
It was a classic Southern California ranch-style house, built in 1958. In a Mexican neighborhood south of San Diego, between National City and Chula Vista. Lomas Doradas. It used to be a sailor’s neighborhood—old Anglo swabs from various wars, and dockworkers from the National City boatyards. Basque tuna fishermen. Gradually, Filipinos moved in, and they gave way to the raza.
All the houses had bars on the windows, which scared outsiders but which nobody from there even saw. None of the grannies on the street wanted some imagined pachuco to break in and steal their Franklin Mint collector plates. John Wayne and angels defending little blond kids with flaming swords hung on kitchen walls all down the street.
Palm trees. Beige walls with bits of brick trim. Asphalt-and-gravel shingles on the roofs. Each house, 1,250 square feet. Five models, each turned at a different angle on its slab for variety. Lantana and geraniums, depressed birds of paradise, cacti. A Joshua tree leaned forward in front of Big Angel’s in a s
mall circle of stones in a slim lawn.
All the houses had four bedrooms and a living room, two bathrooms and a nice kitchen-dining area by the sliding door to the quarter-acre backyard. And myriad garage kingdoms developed as unemployed children came home to Mamá.
América, pues.
At Big Angel’s, a concrete patio faced the backyard, which swooped up a bank taller than the house. Drought-slaughtered ivy and patches of pickleweed and one psychotic nopal cactus that was well on its way to growing into some prehistoric tree. If you went up there above the cactus, you could look south and watch the lights on the Tijuana radio towers blink. In the dark, even Tijuana looked like a scatter of diamonds.
Big Angel had paid for it all.
There was a second building back there, the size and shape of another one-car garage. It was known as Big Angel’s workshop, but nobody had messed with it for years. It had a padlock on the door. They had occasionally raised chickens in the backyard, and the back wall of the workshop was the wall of the coop where they had mounted the sleeping and laying boxes with their straw nests. Fresh eggs every day. And Perla was happy to behead chickens for her pot without blinking. Until the neighbors complained, and the city came along and removed the coops.
Lalo called the neighbors “chicken snitches.”
Perla sat at a table on the patio and rubbed her aching knees. Her small flock of doggies was scuttling around like animated empanadas on meth. “Ay, qué perritos,” she said. They were Chiweenies. Chihuahua/wiener-dog mixes. La Minnie called them “naked mole rats” since she took her kids to the zoo often and knew these things. Minnie had even been to the art museum.
Perla watched the dogs occasionally leave the earth and pogo around the legs of the workers.
She was not going to think about that cemetery for the rest of the weekend.
“Mija,” she called to dear Minnie. “Minerva! Café, sí? Por favor, mi amor.”
Minerva, thought La Minnie. Why did she have to have the weird name?
“You got it, Ma!” she called. “Comin’ right up!”
“Qué?”