Drew, remember when you used to call me your Malinalli? It was a joke, a private game between us, because you looked like a Cortez with that beard of yours. My skin dark against yours. Beautiful, you said. You said I was beautiful, and when you said it, Drew, I was.
My Malinalli, Malinche, my courtesan, you said, and yanked my head back by the braid. Calling me that name in between little gulps of breath and the raw kisses you gave, laughing from that black beard of yours.
Before daybreak, you’d be gone, same as always, before I even knew it. And it was as if I’d imagined you, only the teeth marks on my belly and nipples proving me wrong.
Your skin pale, but your hair blacker than a pirate’s. Malinalli, you called me, remember? Mi doradita. I liked when you spoke to me in my language. I could love myself and think myself worth loving.
Your son. Does he know how much I had to do with his birth? I was the one who convinced you to let him be born. Did you tell him, while his mother lay on her back laboring his birth, I lay in his mother’s bed making love to you.
You’re nothing without me. I created you from spit and red dust. And I can snuff you between my finger and thumb if I want to. Blow you to kingdom come. You’re just a smudge of paint I chose to birth on canvas. And when I made you over, you were no longer a part of her, you were all mine. The landscape of your body taut as a drum. The heart beneath that hide thrumming and thrumming. Not an inch did I give back.
I paint and repaint you the way I see fit, even now. After all these years. Did you know that? Little fool. You think I went hobbling along with my life, whimpering and whining like some twangy country-and-western when you went back to her. But I’ve been waiting. Making the world look at you from my eyes. And if that’s not power, what is?
Nights I light all the candles in the house, the ones to La Virgen de Guadalupe, the ones to El Niño Fidencio, Don Pedrito Jaramillo, Santo Niño de Atocha, Nuestra Señora de San Juan de los Lagos, and especially, Santa Lucía, with her beautiful eyes on a plate.
Your eyes are beautiful, you said. You said they were the darkest eyes you’d ever seen and kissed each one as if they were capable of miracles. And after you left, I wanted to scoop them out with a spoon, place them on a plate under these blue blue skies, food for the blackbirds.
The boy, your son. The one with the face of that redheaded woman who is your wife. The boy red-freckled like fish food floating on the skin of water. That boy.
I’ve been waiting patient as a spider all these years, since I was nineteen and he was just an idea hovering in his mother’s head, and I’m the one that gave him permission and made it happen, see.
Because your father wanted to leave your mother and live with me. Your mother whining for a child, at least that. And he kept saying, Later, we’ll see, later. But all along it was me he wanted to be with, it was me, he said.
I want to tell you this evenings when you come to see me. When you’re full of talk about what kind of clothes you’re going to buy, and what you used to be like when you started high school and what you’re like now that you’re almost finished. And how everyone knows you as a rocker, and your band, and your new red guitar that you just got because your mother gave you a choice, a guitar or a car, but you don’t need a car, do you, because I drive you everywhere. You could be my son if you weren’t so light-skinned.
This happened. A long time ago. Before you were born. When you were a moth inside your mother’s heart, I was your father’s student, yes, just like you’re mine now. And your father painted and painted me, because he said, I was his doradita, all golden and sun-baked, and that’s the kind of woman he likes best, the ones brown as river sand, yes. And he took me under his wing and in his bed, this man, this teacher, your father. I was honored that he’d done me the favor. I was that young.
All I know is I was sleeping with your father the night you were born. In the same bed where you were conceived. I was sleeping with your father and didn’t give a damn about that woman, your mother. If she was a brown woman like me, I might’ve had a harder time living with myself, but since she’s not, I don’t care. I was there first, always. I’ve always been there, in the mirror, under his skin, in the blood, before you were born. And he’s been here in my heart before I even knew him. Understand? He’s always been here. Always. Dissolving like a hibiscus flower, exploding like a rope into dust. I don’t care what’s right anymore. I don’t care about his wife. She’s not my sister.
And it’s not the last time I’ve slept with a man the night his wife is birthing a baby. Why do I do that, I wonder? Sleep with a man when his wife is giving life, being suckled by a thing with its eyes still shut. Why do that? It’s always given me a bit of crazy joy to be able to kill those women like that, without their knowing it. To know I’ve had their husbands when they were anchored in blue hospital rooms, their guts yanked inside out, the baby sucking their breasts while their husband sucked mine. All this while their ass stitches were still hurting.
Once, drunk on margaritas, I telephoned your father at four in the morning, woke the bitch up. Hello, she chirped. I want to talk to Drew. Just a moment, she said in her most polite drawing-room English. Just a moment. I laughed about that for weeks. What a stupid ass to pass the phone over to the lug asleep beside her. Excuse me, honey, it’s for you. When Drew mumbled hello I was laughing so hard I could hardly talk. Drew? That dumb bitch of a wife of yours, I said, and that’s all I could manage. That stupid stupid stupid. No Mexican woman would react like that. Excuse me, honey. It cracked me up.
He’s got the same kind of skin, the boy. All the blue veins pale and clear just like his mama. Skin like roses in December. Pretty boy. Little clone. Little cells split into you and you and you. Tell me, baby, which part of you is your mother. I try to imagine her lips, her jaw, her long long legs that wrapped themselves around this father who took me to his bed.
This happened. I’m asleep. Or pretend to be. You’re watching me, Drew. I feel your weight when you sit on the corner of the bed, dressed and ready to go, but now you’re just watching me sleep. Nothing. Not a word. Not a kiss. Just sitting. You’re taking me in, under inspection. What do you think already?
I haven’t stopped dreaming you. Did you know that? Do you think it’s strange? I never tell, though. I keep it to myself like I do all the thoughts I think of you.
After all these years.
I don’t want you looking at me. I don’t want you taking me in while I’m asleep. I’ll open my eyes and frighten you away.
There. What did I tell you? Drew? What is it? Nothing. I’d knew you’d say that.
Let’s not talk. We’re no good at it. With you I’m useless with words. As if somehow I had to learn to speak all over again, as if the words I needed haven’t been invented yet. We’re cowards. Come back to bed. At least there I feel I have you for a little. For a moment. For a catch of the breath. You let go. You ache and tug. You rip my skin.
You’re almost not a man without your clothes. How do I explain it? You’re so much a child in my bed. Nothing but a big boy who needs to be held. I won’t let anyone hurt you. My pirate. My slender boy of a man.
After all these years.
I didn’t imagine it, did I? A Ganges, an eye of the storm. For a little. When we forgot ourselves, you tugged me, I leapt inside you and split you like an apple. Opened for the other to look and not give back. Something wrenched itself loose. Your body doesn’t lie. It’s not silent like you.
You’re nude as a pearl. You’ve lost your train of smoke. You’re tender as rain. If I’d put you in my mouth you’d dissolve like snow.
You were ashamed to be so naked. Pulled back. But I saw you for what you are, when you opened yourself for me. When you were careless and let yourself through. I caught that catch of the breath. I’m not crazy.
When you slept, you tugged me toward you. You sought me in the dark. I didn’t sleep. Every cell, every follicle, every nerve, alert.
Watching you sigh and roll and turn and
hug me closer to you. I didn’t sleep. I was taking you in that time.
Your mother? Only once. Years after your father and I stopped seeing each other. At an art exhibition. A show on the photographs of Eugène Atget. Those images, I could look at them for hours. I’d taken a group of students with me.
It was your father I saw first. And in that instant I felt as if everyone in the room, all the sepia-toned photographs, my students, the men in business suits, the high-heeled women, the security guards, everyone, could see me for what I was. I had to scurry out, lead my kids to another gallery, but some things destiny has cut out for you.
He caught up with us in the coat-check area, arm in arm with a redheaded Barbie doll in a fur coat. One of those scary Dallas types, hair yanked into a ponytail, big shiny face like the women behind the cosmetic counters at Neiman’s. That’s what I remember. She must’ve been with him all along, only I swear I never saw her until that second.
You could tell from a slight hesitancy, only slight because he’s too suave to hesitate, that he was nervous. Then he’s walking toward me, and I didn’t know what to do, just stood there dazed like those animals crossing the road at night when the headlights stun them.
And I don’t know why, but all of a sudden I looked at my shoes and felt ashamed at how old they looked. And he comes up to me, my love, your father, in that way of his with that grin that makes me want to beat him, makes me want to make love to him, and he says in the most sincere voice you ever heard, “Ah, Clemencia! This is Megan.” No introduction could’ve been meaner. This is Megan. Just like that.
I grinned like an idiot and held out my paw—“Hello, Megan”—and smiled too much the way you do when you can’t stand someone. Then I got the hell out of there, chattering like a monkey all the ride back with my kids. When I got home I had to lie down with a cold washcloth on my forehead and the TV on. All I could hear throbbing under the washcloth in that deep part behind my eyes: This is Megan.
And that’s how I fell asleep, with the TV on and every light in the house burning. When I woke up it was something like three in the morning. I shut the lights and TV and went to get some aspirin, and the cats, who’d been asleep with me on the couch, got up too and followed me into the bathroom as if they knew what’s what. And then they followed me into bed, where they aren’t allowed, but this time I just let them, fleas and all.
This happened, too. I swear I’m not making this up. It’s all true. It was the last time I was going to be with your father. We had agreed. All for the best. Surely I could see that, couldn’t I? My own good. A good sport. A young girl like me. Hadn’t I understood … responsibilities. Besides, he could never marry me. You didn’t think…? Never marry a Mexican. Never marry a Mexican … No, of course not. I see. I see.
We had the house to ourselves for a few days, who knows how. You and your mother had gone somewhere. Was it Christmas? I don’t remember.
I remember the leaded-glass lamp with the milk glass above the dining-room table. I made a mental inventory of everything. The Egyptian lotus design on the hinges of the doors. The narrow, dark hall where your father and I had made love once. The four-clawed tub where he had washed my hair and rinsed it with a tin bowl. This window. That counter. The bedroom with its light in the morning, incredibly soft, like the light from a polished dime.
The house was immaculate, as always, not a stray hair anywhere, not a flake of dandruff or a crumpled towel. Even the roses on the dining-room table held their breath. A kind of airless cleanliness that always made me want to sneeze.
Why was I so curious about this woman he lived with? Every time I went to the bathroom, I found myself opening the medicine cabinet, looking at all the things that were hers. Her Estée Lauder lipsticks. Corals and pinks, of course. Her nail polishes—mauve was as brave as she could wear. Her cotton balls and blond hairpins. A pair of bone-colored sheepskin slippers, as clean as the day she’d bought them. On the door hook—a white robe with a MADE IN ITALY label, and a silky nightshirt with pearl buttons. I touched the fabrics. Calidad. Quality.
I don’t know how to explain what I did next. While your father was busy in the kitchen, I went over to where I’d left my backpack, and took out a bag of gummy bears I’d bought. And while he was banging pots, I went around the house and left a trail of them in places I was sure she would find them. One in her lucite makeup organizer. One stuffed inside each bottle of nail polish. I untwisted the expensive lipsticks to their full length and smushed a bear on the top before recapping them. I even put a gummy bear in her diaphragm case in the very center of that luminescent rubber moon.
Why bother? Drew could take the blame. Or he could say it was the cleaning woman’s Mexican voodoo. I knew that, too. It didn’t matter. I got a strange satisfaction wandering about the house leaving them in places only she would look.
And just as Drew was shouting, “Dinner!” I saw it on the desk. One of those wooden babushka dolls Drew had brought her from his trip to Russia. I know. He’d bought one just like it for me.
I just did what I did, uncapped the doll inside a doll inside a doll, until I got to the very center, the tiniest baby inside all the others, and this I replaced with a gummy bear. And then I put the dolls back, just like I’d found them, one inside the other, inside the other. Except for the baby, which I put inside my pocket. All through dinner I kept reaching in the pocket of my jean jacket. When I touched it, it made me feel good.
On the way home, on the bridge over the arroyo on Guadalupe Street, I stopped the car, switched on the emergency blinkers, got out, and dropped the wooden toy into that muddy creek where winos piss and rats swim. The Barbie doll’s toy stewing there in that muck. It gave me a feeling like nothing before and since.
Then I drove home and slept like the dead.
These mornings, I fix coffee for me, milk for the boy. I think of that woman, and I can’t see a trace of my lover in this boy, as if she conceived him by immaculate conception.
I sleep with this boy, their son. To make the boy love me the way I love his father. To make him want me, hunger, twist in his sleep, as if he’d swallowed glass. I put him in my mouth. Here, little piece of my corazón. Boy with hard thighs and just a bit of down and a small hard downy ass like his father’s, and that back like a valentine. Come here, mi cariñito. Come to mamita. Here’s a bit of toast.
I can tell from the way he looks at me, I have him in my power. Come, sparrow. I have the patience of eternity. Come to mamita. My stupid little bird. I don’t move. I don’t startle him. I let him nibble. All, all for you. Rub his belly. Stroke him. Before I snap my teeth.
What is it inside me that makes me so crazy at 2 A.M.? I can’t blame it on alcohol in my blood when there isn’t any. It’s something worse. Something that poisons the blood and tips me when the night swells and I feel as if the whole sky were leaning against my brain.
And if I killed someone on a night like this? And if it was me I killed instead, I’d be guilty of getting in the line of crossfire, innocent bystander, isn’t it a shame. I’d be walking with my head full of images and my back to the guilty. Suicide? I couldn’t say. I didn’t see it.
Except it’s not me who I want to kill. When the gravity of the planets is just right, it all tilts and upsets the visible balance. And that’s when it wants to out from my eyes. That’s when I get on the telephone, dangerous as a terrorist. There’s nothing to do but let it come.
So. What do you think? Are you convinced now I’m as crazy as a tulip or a taxi? As vagrant as a cloud?
Sometimes the sky is so big and I feel so little at night. That’s the problem with being cloud. The sky is so terribly big. Why is it worse at night, when I have such an urge to communicate and no language with which to form the words? Only colors. Pictures. And you know what I have to say isn’t always pleasant.
Oh, love, there. I’ve gone and done it. What good is it? Good or bad, I’ve done what I had to do and needed to. And you’ve answered the phone, and startled me away like
a bird. And now you’re probably swearing under your breath and going back to sleep, with that wife beside you, warm, radiating her own heat, alive under the flannel and down and smelling a bit like milk and hand cream, and that smell familiar and dear to you, oh.
Human beings pass me on the street, and I want to reach out and strum them as if they were guitars. Sometimes all humanity strikes me as lovely. I just want to reach out and stroke someone, and say There, there, it’s all right, honey. There, there, there.
Bread
We were hungry. We went into a bakery on Grand Avenue and bought bread. Filled the backseat. The whole car smelled of bread. Big sourdough loaves shaped like a fat ass. Fat-ass bread, I said in Spanish, Nalgona bread. Fat-ass bread, he said in Italian, but I forget how he said it.
We ripped big chunks with our hands and ate. The car a pearl blue like my heart that afternoon. Smell of warm bread, bread in both fists, a tango on the tape player loud, loud, loud, because me and him, we’re the only ones who can stand it like that, like if the bandoneón, violin, piano, guitar, bass, were inside us, like when he wasn’t married, like before his kids, like if all the pain hadn’t passed between us.