Sandra Cisneros’s
WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK
and Other Stories
“Cisneros is the impassioned bard of the Mexican border.”
—Boston Globe
“The author seduces with precise, spare prose and creates unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[Cisneros’s] feminist, Mexican-American voice is not only playful and vigorous, it’s original—we haven’t heard anything like it before.… This book should make [her] reputation as a major author.”
—Newsweek
“One of the more original and refreshing voices to emerge on the fiction scene in recent years … a natural writer whose unrestrained, subtly accented, and light-as-a-feather prose distinguishes her new book.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Wonderful—moving, vivid, honest and very clearly the work of an author who feels great love for the people she writes about.”
—Mirabella
“Her triumphant, earthy shout is about life as the multifaceted women in her stories live it.… Cisneros’s prose is the kind you can taste and feel: the dusty summers of San Antonio, the colors and sounds and flavors of life in full bloom. The voices in her stories are uniquely Chicana: The emotions they evoke are universal.… Woman Hollering Creek offers a gift to the uninitiated, the chance to taste deeply of Hispanic culture while accompanied by a knowing and generous guide.”
—Houston Chronicle
“These stories vibrate with life, they breathe and laugh and weep and rage. Cisneros’s world is … described with fire and love, and some just plain terrific writing. Brava Cisneros!”
—San Diego Tribune
“[Cisneros is] a writer who takes bold chances with a firm hand; [her] words seek the line between story and music. And, as in many Cisneros stories, we are taken across the bridge of sadness with a long ribbon of laughter gurgling like the creek. These are wise works by a writer whose poetry of language matches her most basic power of story.”
—Miami Herald
“Cisneros is a fearless writer boldly plunging into complex characters and risky situations, and in Women Hollering Creek she displays a virtuoso range. Cisneros has a poet’s ear and eye.”
—Elle
“A brave author. She gives her heart to her readers like a birthday present wrapped in tears. Cisneros is the whisper that you strain to hear from the mouth of a lover.”
—Kansas City Star
“An interwoven tapestry of visions and experiences … vigorous, punchy and imagistic … Ms. Cisneros’s work merges place and mind to yield a unique vision of the Southwest.”
—Dallas Morning News
“Cisneros challenges her reader to see life as it really is—full of unrequited passions and solitary confusions, with moments of connection real but few and far between.… Cisneros has a fresh voice that helps us read ourselves … a collection that can’t be ignored.”
—Detroit Free Press
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, MARCH 1992
Copyright © 1991 by Sandra Cisneros
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1991.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
ARTE PUBLICO PRESS: “Mexican Movies” by Sandra Cisneros was first published in the Americas Review, Volume 16, No. 3-4.
Reprinted by permission.
TRADITION MUSIC COMPANY: Excerpt from the song “Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio” by Santiago Jimenez.
Copyright © by Tradition Music Co. (BMI).
Reprinted by permission.
Some of the stories in this work were originally published in Americas Review, Grand Street, Humanizarte, Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Saguaro, Story, and The Village Voice Literary Supplement.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cisneros, Sandra.
Woman hollering creek and other stories / Sandra Cisneros.—1st Vintage contemporaries ed.
p. cm.—(contemporaries)
“Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1991”—T.p. verso.
eISBN: 978-0-8041-5088-0
1. Mexican Americans—Fiction. 2. Mexican-American Border Region—Fiction. I. Title.
[PS3553 I78W66 1992]
813′. 54—dc2o 91-58002
v3.1
For my mama,
Elvira Cordero Anguiano,
who gave me the fierce language.
Y para mi papá,
Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral,
quien me dió el lenguaje de la ternura.
Estos cuentitos se los dedico
con todo mi corazón.
Los Acknowledgments
Mi Querido Público,
Some of the early stories in this collection were written while I was living in the guest bedroom of my brother and hermana-in-law’s house, Alfred Cisneros, Jr., and Julie Parrales-Cisneros. For the open-door policy, for the luxury of that room when I needed to be writer, thank you.
Gracias to my mother, la smart cookie, my S&L financial bailout more times than I’d like to admit.
To the National Endowment for the Arts for twice saving me in one lifetime. Thank you. Always, thank you. My life, my writing, have never been the same since.
Rubén, late or early, una vez o siempre—gracias.
La casita on West Eleventh Street. A borrowed blessing! Thank you, Sara Stevenson and Richard Queen, for your generosity.
Las readers de conciencia—Helena Viramontes, Liliana Valenzuela, Sonia Saldívar-Hull, Norma Alarcón. Song researchers—Laura Pérez y María Herrera-Sobek. A todas, gracias.
Las San Antonio girlfriends—Catherine Burst, Alba DeLeon, Sophia Healy, Joan Frederick Denton, y la Terry “Mujer de Fuerza” Ybañez. Tex-Mex text inspected by Juanita “La Tejanita” Luna-Lawhn. Agradecimientos. Un beso y apretón para cada una.
La Yugo sister—Jasna “Caramba” Karaula. Sister, hvala.
Los San Antonio vatos—Ito Romo, Danny Lozano, Craig Pennel, César “Ponqui” Martínez—gracias, muchachos.
My thanks to los mero meros—El Erroll McDonald y la Joni Evans de Random House. For fierce support and fierce faith.
Praise to la bien bien linda Julie Grau, my editor. Ay, Julie, believe me, I am eternally grateful for your unflagging cariño, patience, and sensitivity through the labor and delivery of this book.
Gracias a la Divina Providencia que me mandó la muy powerful y miraculous literary protectora, Susan Bergholz la brava. Hay que hechar gritos, prender velitas, hacer backflips. Te abrazo con mi corazón, Susan. Por todo.
Damas y caballeros, un fuerte fuerte aplauso for my most special reader, the most special friend. El Dennis Mathis. Mi Ojitos.
Virgen de Guadalupe Tonantzín, infinitas gracias. Estos cuentitos te los ofrezco a tí, a nuestra gente. A toditos. Mil gracias. A thousand thanks from el corazón.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Los Acknowledgments
I. MY LUCY FRIEND WHO SMELLS LIKE CORN
My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn
Eleven
Salvador Late or Early
Mexican Movies
Barbie-Q
Mer
icans
Tepeyac
II. ONE HOLY NIGHT
One Holy Night
My Tocaya
III. THERE WAS A MAN, THERE WAS A WOMAN
Woman Hollering Creek
The Marlboro Man
La Fabulosa: A Texas Operetta
Remember the Alamo
Never Marry a Mexican
Bread
Eyes of Zapata
Anguiano Religious Articles Rosaries Statues …
Little Miracles, Kept Promises
Los Boxers
There Was a Man, There Was a Woman
Tin Tan Tan
Bien Pretty
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
También yo te quiero
y te quiero feliz.
—CRI CRÍ
(FRANCISCO GABILONDO SOLER)
My Lucy Friend
Who Smells Like Corn
Lucy Anguiano, Texas girl who smells like corn, like Frito Bandito chips, like tortillas, something like that warm smell of nixtamal or bread the way her head smells when she’s leaning close to you over a paper cut-out doll or on the porch when we are squatting over marbles trading this pretty crystal that leaves a blue star on your hand for that giant cat-eye with a grasshopper green spiral in the center like the juice of bugs on the windshield when you drive to the border, like the yellow blood of butterflies.
Have you ever eated dog food? I have. After crunching like ice, she opens her big mouth to prove it, only a pink tongue rolling around in there like a blind worm, and Janey looking in because she said Show me. But me I like that Lucy, corn smell hair and aqua flip-flops just like mine that we bought at the K mart for only 79 cents same time.
I’m going to sit in the sun, don’t care if it’s a million trillion degrees outside, so my skin can get so dark it’s blue where it bends like Lucy’s. Her whole family like that. Eyes like knife slits. Lucy and her sisters. Norma, Margarita, Ofelia, Herminia, Nancy, Olivia, Cheli, y la Amber Sue.
Screen door with no screen. Bang! Little black dog biting his fur. Fat couch on the porch. Some of the windows painted blue, some pink, because her daddy got tired that day or forgot. Mama in the kitchen feeding clothes into the wringer washer and clothes rolling out all stiff and twisted and flat like paper. Lucy got her arm stuck once and had to yell Maaa! and her mama had to put the machine in reverse and then her hand rolled back, the finger black and later, her nail fell off. But did your arm get flat like the clothes? What happened to your arm? Did they have to pump it with air? No, only the finger, and she didn’t cry neither.
Lean across the porch rail and pin the pink sock of the baby Amber Sue on top of Cheli’s flowered T-shirt, and the blue jeans of la Ofelia over the inside seam of Olivia’s blouse, over the flannel nightgown of Margarita so it don’t stretch out, and then you take the work shirts of their daddy and hang them upside down like this, and this way all the clothes don’t get so wrinkled and take up less space and you don’t waste pins. The girls all wear each other’s clothes, except Olivia, who is stingy. There ain’t no boys here. Only girls and one father who is never home hardly and one mother who says Ay! I’m real tired and so many sisters there’s no time to count them.
I’m sitting in the sun even though it’s the hottest part of the day, the part that makes the streets dizzy, when the heat makes a little hat on the top of your head and bakes the dust and weed grass and sweat up good, all steamy and smelling like sweet corn.
I want to rub heads and sleep in a bed with little sisters, some at the top and some at the feets. I think it would be fun to sleep with sisters you could yell at one at a time or all together, instead of alone on the fold-out chair in the living room.
When I get home Abuelita will say Didn’t I tell you? and I’ll get it because I was supposed to wear this dress again tomorrow. But first I’m going to jump off an old pissy mattress in the Anguiano yard. I’m going to scratch your mosquito bites, Lucy, so they’ll itch you, then put Mercurochrome smiley faces on them. We’re going to trade shoes and wear them on our hands. We’re going to walk over to Janey Ortiz’s house and say We’re never ever going to be your friend again forever! We’re going to run home backwards and we’re going to run home frontwards, look twice under the house where the rats hide and I’ll stick one foot in there because you dared me, sky so blue and heaven inside those white clouds. I’m going to peel a scab from my knee and eat it, sneeze on the cat, give you three M & M’s I’ve been saving for you since yesterday, comb your hair with my fingers and braid it into teeny-tiny braids real pretty. We’re going to wave to a lady we don’t know on the bus. Hello! I’m going to somersault on the rail of the front porch even though my chones show. And cut paper dolls we draw ourselves, and color in their clothes with crayons, my arm around your neck.
And when we look at each other, our arms gummy from an orange Popsicle we split, we could be sisters, right? We could be, you and me waiting for our teeths to fall and money. You laughing something into my ear that tickles, and me going Ha Ha Ha Ha. Her and me, my Lucy friend who smells like corn.
Eleven
What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.
Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.
You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.
Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I’d have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth.
“Whose is this?” Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater up in the air for all the class to see. “Whose? It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.”
“Not mine,” says everybody. “Not me.”
“It has to belong to somebody,” Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It’s an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It’s maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn’t say so.
Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldívar says, “I think it belongs to Rachel.” An ugly sweater like that, all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs. Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out.
“That’s not, I don’t, you’re not … Not mine,” I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four.
“Of course it’s yours,” Mrs. Price says. “I remember you wearing it once.” Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right and I’m not.
Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two
, and math problem number four. I don’t know why but all of a sudden I’m feeling sick inside, like the part of me that’s three wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite down on my teeth real hard and try to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me for tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.
But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine.
In my head I’m thinking how long till lunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it over the schoolyard fence, or leave it hanging on a parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss it in the alley. Except when math period ends Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody, “Now, Rachel, that’s enough,” because she sees I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-tip corner of my desk and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care.
“Rachel,” Mrs. Price says. She says it like she’s getting mad. “You put that sweater on right now and no more nonsense.”
“But it’s not—”
“Now!” Mrs. Price says.
This is when I wish I wasn’t eleven, because all the years inside of me—ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one—are pushing at the back of my eyes when I put one arm through one sleeve of the sweater that smells like cottage cheese, and then the other arm through the other and stand there with my arms apart like if the sweater hurts me and it does, all itchy and full of germs that aren’t even mine.
That’s when everything I’ve been holding in since this morning, since when Mrs. Price put the sweater on my desk, finally lets go, and all of a sudden I’m crying in front of everybody. I wish I was invisible but I’m not. I’m eleven and it’s my birthday today and I’m crying like I’m three in front of everybody. I put my head down on the desk and bury my face in my stupid clown-sweater arms. My face all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can’t stop the little animal noises from coming out of me, until there aren’t any more tears left in my eyes, and it’s just my body shaking like when you have the hiccups, and my whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast.