“I can do what I want,” she argues. “But why rub it in his face? He’s seventy-two years old—what’s the point? Let him die thinking that I regained my virginity after my divorces.”
Sometimes he laughs, but sometimes, like now, he confronts her. “Aren’t you supposed to be a feminist? How can you let your daddy tell you what to do with your body?”
“He’s not telling me what to do with my body,” she says, annoyed. “I’m just not telling him what I’m doing with it, okay?”
And then she goes into this big thing about cultural differences, that hey, he can’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Once he tried to tell her that being from the South was like being from another culture, but they got into a heated discussion about slavery, and he came out responsible for all that the black folks had suffered. Only recently, he read about slave wages on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic. But he has decided to keep his mouth shut for now. After all, he’s working on a straight-up invitation to come and visit her down there.
Maybe because he is so caught up in trying to convince her, he forgets and picks up the phone when it rings. Yo lunges for the receiver, but it is too late. Dexter has already said, “Howdy there.”
A heavily accented voice challenges him, “Who is this?”
“This is Luigi’s Pizza Parlor, mister,” he says quickly. “We’re having a special tonight on the pepperoni. Can I interest you in a large.”
“O,” the father says in a small, pacified voice. “Pardon me the wrong number.”
Pardon me the wrong number! Kisses on his eyelids and amorsito for a pet name. Sometimes the woman’s libber, sometimes the Spanish Inquisition. Man, what’s he doing falling in love with this complicated spic chick in the middle of his life? But then, when has he ever done anything the easy way, as his father was always one to ask.
A couple of weeks into her stay down there, Yo calls him up in the middle of the night to complain. “I can’t stand it,” she says, “the aunts are driving me crazy. They want me to go to confession.”
“What for?” he asks. He has some vague notion that Catholics do things in small wooden closets with priests.
“They think this time my uncle will win the election if we’re all reconciled to God.”
“So go, Yo-baby. Just get in that little closet and ask the priest if he wants to do something else besides confess you.”
“Dexter!” She sounds truly annoyed. Usually she laughs at his jokes. The place must be getting to her.
“Well, come on back, then, baby,” he offers. As far as Dexter is concerned the world is pretty simple. When the shit hits the fan, you turn the fan off. That’s why he quit college. Everyone was always trying to be so smart. Back and forth they’d go in those overheated classrooms. But what other options are there besides turning off the fan? “Come on home to ole Dex, honey.”
“What do you mean, home,” she snaps. Her English has already picked up the lilt of an accent. “This is my home.”
He’s also not going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. She hasn’t lived there for a quarter of a century. She works here, makes love here, has her friends here, pays taxes here, will probably die here. Seems to him all she goes down there for is to get confessed or disowned. Still, when she talks about the D.R., she gets all dewy-eyed as if she were crocheting a little sweater and booties for that island, as if she had given birth to it herself out of the womb of her memory.
Well, he has made up his mind: he’s going down there whether she’ll have him or not. “It’s a free country,” he tells her.
“Not exactly,” she answers, and then adds, “Don’t you dare, Dexter.”
But those four words, as his mamma and daddy well know, are like turning the key to Dexter’s ignition. By the end of the week, he has bought a ticket, put in for ten days off at the hospital where he’s a nurse, and stashed enough reefer in an empty baby powder container in his dopp kit to guarantee smooth sailing through the turbulences of Yo’s family. When he calls her up to let her know he’ll be there tomorrow, a suave man’s voice answers in perfect English. “Right oh,” he says as if Dexter had called one of the British islands instead of the D.R. Then it dawns on him that this is probably the uncle running for president. “Good luck, sir,” he says before Yolanda comes on the line.
“Right oh,” the uncle says again.
Dexter informs Yo of his imminent arrival. He can hear a gasp, quickly covered over by a phoney oh really, and thank you for letting me know, so the uncle must still be in the room. It is quite apparent when Yo is alone again. “I’ll kill you, Dexter Hays. I truly will.”
For a moment he wonders whether to take her seriously. In the movies, if you cross them, Latin ladies are capable of anything. But here he is making the same mistake she makes. Yo is as American as apple pie. Well, let’s say, as American as a Taco Bell taco. She claims the litmus test is if you say Oh or Ay when you smash your finger with a hammer. There’ve been plenty of times when she’s bumped into something going to the bathroom in his unfamiliar apartment in the middle of the night and let out a “shit!” He wonders what that proves about her, if anything.
But Dexter knows Yo is not going to hack him down with a machete at the airport. “Your uncle’s running for president, remember. You don’t want to ruin his chances by committing murder on the eve of elections, now do you?”
“Are you trying to blackmail me?!”
In her voice, Dexter hears the whetting of something sharp. He backs down. “No baby, I’m courting you. I miss the hell out of you. I’ve cut off my ponytail. I’ve taken my birthstone out of my ear. I’ll cut off my balls and come as your girlfriend if that’s the only way.”
“A lot of good that’ll do me,” she says in a voice struggling to stay stern. He can feel her swaying like one of those palm trees in a hurricane wind on the weather channel. It’s true that Yo is never at a loss for words, but Dexter is the world’s smoothest talker. The head nurse in the ER likes to say Dexter thought up the talking cure before the shrinks cashed in on it. “I’ll pretend I’m just a friend, okay. I’ll go to confession with you. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let my starving eyes feast on the sight of your beautiful self.”
“Well,” Yo sighs. In the background Dexter can hear the sound of firecrackers going off, or maybe that’s the sound of gunshot. For a crazy moment, he wonders if he’ll get out of this alive. “I’m going to say you’re a journalist friend,” Yo is saying. “You’ve come to cover the elections for your paper. Bring your tape recorder.”
“It’s a tape deck,” Dexter reminds her, and as soon as he says so, he could bite off his tongue. All she needs is one excuse to cancel his leading role in the plot she is cooking up. “But I could go buy a tape recorder. Wal-Mart’s open till ten.”
“Dexter, just bring the tape deck, okay. All you’ve got to do is turn it on. Just as long as the tape’s moving.”
“Okay, okay.” He agrees to the rest of the conditions she lays down for him. But when he hangs up, he has an uneasy feeling that he has been dating someone with a personality disorder. He has never really liked Yo’s lying to her family. He himself told his parents what was what back in high school, and then again when he dropped out of college. Take it or leave it. But at least her family fibs are understandable, the good daughter trying to spare her parents grief. You don’t have to be old world Latino to understand that. Look at his sister Mary Sue, pretending to obey Mamma’s dictums about what not to let a guy do down there, meanwhile hot-tailing it all over Carrboro where she now lives, the divorced mother of three precious little girls, who do not—no one’s going to talk Dexter into it—do not look like each other in the least.
But this is different. Yo’s fabrications are not just about saving somebody’s feelings or her ass. It’s as if the world is her plaything and she can just pick up the facts and make them what she wants. He begins to doubt everything she’s told him. Is her uncle running for president? Is she really Latin and unmarried wit
h a teaching job in New Hampshire or an undercover agent with the FBI with a husband and five kids in Maryland? Suddenly the world seems very complicated, a world which is not simply black and white, but a shifting interplay of shadows, so unlike Dexter’s bright lights and rockets’ red glare.
Dex is all eyes as the limousine glides up the driveway past the guard at the gate. Beside him, Yo lifts a hand absently in acknowledgement just like someone in a tickertape parade in the States. “Hot damn, honey,” he says, throwing his arm around her in a proud way.
“Dex.” She nods towards the chauffeur. “Remember.”
He gives her an exaggerated wink as he removes his arm. In the rearview mirror, he can see the chauffeur gazing back at him. He winks at the young man who responds with just the slightest nod of the head. Dex wonders if he is supposed to tip the guy to keep his mouth shut? It’s as if he has wandered into a gangster world and hasn’t yet figured out what the rules are.
But Yo has already filled him in on the lay of the land—he’ll be staying at her aunt Flor’s pool house. Yo is over across the garden at her aunt Carmen’s house. “Is the garden well-lighted at night?” Dexter asked, pretending innocence. Yo threw a warning glance in his direction. They were still at the airport where she had met up with a handful of cousins who happened to be arriving on the same plane. “I told you everyone’s related down here. The place is a fishbowl.”
They’ll be staying in town for a week in the family compound; then, the day after the elections, they’ll head north for a weekend on the coast. Lucinda, one of the cousins Dexter has heard a lot about, has told Yo about this discreet resort that none of the old guard would go to. It’s too far removed and très funky, owned by a French couple—the husband offers massages, personal or non-personal; the wife takes off her bikini top at poolside and not just to go belly-down on a canvas chair. Most crucifix-hung Dominican women would scatter at the sight. But there is what Yo calls her “hair-and-nails cousins” who are not fainthearted and who are actually cooking up a little feminist revolution of their own under that cloud of hair spray and eye shadow. Among them, old Lucy fox, whom Dexter claims to be already half in love with just from hearing Yo’s stories.
“But how’d you manage to get us up there free and clear?” Dex is intrigued.
“I’m your guide.” It’s her turn to wink. “You’re a journalist who wants to see how democracy is working in remote areas of the country.” An odd smile comes on her lips, the smile of someone who might be actually enjoying her fibs.
Again that uneasy feeling creeps up on Dexter. Doesn’t the family catch on or are they morons or what? He wonders if a man should be president who can’t see through a niece with a history. “Your family really bought the story?”
“Of course, they bought it.” Yo rolls her eyes at him. “It’s all one big story down here, anyway. The aunts all know that their husbands have mistresses but they act like they don’t know. The president is blind but he pretends he can see. Stuff like that. It’s like one of those Latin American novels that everyone thinks is magical realism in the States, but it’s the way things really are down here.”
And with that little intro and a squeeze of his hand, they arrive at a large, elegant ranch house with sliding jalousie doors opened to the outdoors. A couple of maids in salmon-colored uniforms with white collars peek out the back door and wave at Yo. Then an aunt comes down between the orchids that grow on both sides of the covered entryway. She is wearing the bright campaign button that shows the uncle’s handsome face pinned on her bosom and trailing a brood of nephews and nieces all sporting buttons. One little tyke has a whole chest of them as if they were medals. “Welcome”—the aunt smiles warmly—“welcome to the land Columbus loved the best, Mister Hays!”
For a moment he wonders if he can carry it off. Such a nice lady with a smile to light up the world. But the words come out of his lips without effort. “Oh please, call me Dexter. I’m so glad to be here. I’m such a supporter. And I think our country must be told about the strides that are being made towards democracy just south of our borders.”
He has said too much. Everyone seems taken aback by his little speech. The maids start giggling, and one tiny dark-headed girl, a replica of Yo, is tugging impatiently at his arm. Perhaps they all know already who he is, and the pretense is just pro forma to make everybody feel at ease. Just like these democratic elections which—he heard on the plane—will be patrolled by tanks on the streets.
Okay, he thinks. I get it. Go along with the story. Don’t try to make it real.
The garden is well-lighted at night, white Chinese lanterns posted at intervals on the cobbled path. But every time he sets out towards the bright mecca of Yo’s bedroom, Dexter lands in the arms of another uncle, patting an abrazo on his back, asking him if he is getting everything he wants. It is an odd question to be asked just on the brink of achieving his desire, but yes, he answers heartily, everything is fine, thanks a bunch.
And night after night, these uncles or cousins or whoever they are somehow swing him around and lead him into one or another covered patio with a trellis of dripping bougainvillea and a built-in mahogany bar. Maybe it is the same place, maybe not. One patio is so much like another. The compound is a maze of paths and of plants that seem caricatures of the ones he knows in the States. Dexter has never seen such hibiscus, the blossoms as big as dinner plates, and the rolled-up fronds of ferns are as thick as elephants’ trunks. The uncle or cousin or man-servant offers him a shot of rum or a Presidente for good luck for the campaign, and Dexter ends up so boozed up, he can barely stumble his way back to his own room in the pool house, thrashing through hedges and bringing down a rain of those Goliath hibiscus.
The next morning at breakfast, he sees the look on Yo’s face, as if he has failed her somehow. As if again he is taking the fiction too seriously, pretending to be a journalist by night as well as by day.
“It’s not that,” he whispers to her when they are alone for a moment. “It’s like your uncles have this radar. They keep cutting me off at the pass!”
She shakes her head. “Ay, Dexter. You’ve just got to outsmart them.” But he can’t seem to—even when he tries a new route and ends up stumbling into one of the innumerable little swimming pools on the grounds, soaking his nice new pair of pants. As the dogs commence their wild barking and several night watchmen converge, beaming flashlights at his face, Dexter has a brief image of Winnie Sutherland, shaking her head at him. She is right. He’s never going to make it in this adult world of smooth operators. He might as well just float on his back and squirt chlorinated water up at those fuzzy, far-off stars.
On election day, Dexter is caught smoking behind the pool house by Lucy the fox and her flock of little ones. She is herding them to his pool, each one wearing a bright teensy bikini, Lucinda’s no bigger than those of the children, although hers is somewhat modestly covered by a short kimono. With its diaphanous silken folds the robe seems more erotic to Dexter than the bright patches of spandex Lucinda has on underneath. A maid, swathed in white and carrying a pile of towels, brings up the rear.
“Buenas, Dexter,” Lucinda greets him. Her face is all made up. Looking at her from the neck up, it is hard to believe she really means to go swimming. “Being a bad boy, eh? Sneaking a cigarette!”
Quickly, Dex shifts the joint from his pincer-like hold to the cigarette mode, between middle and forefinger. He wonders if he is going to get away with it. From what he has heard of her, Lucinda surely knows the difference.
“It’s not good for you,” one of the older girls pipes up in a slightly British version of English. “Mami gave it up. Didn’t you, Mami?”
Lucinda nods in mock seriousness. It’s hard to believe old Lucy fox would give up anything fun, Dexter ponders.
“It smells funny,” the miniscule Yolanda clone declares, making a face. She has spoken in Spanish, but Dexter has understood her words perfectly. Either his high school Spanish is holding up better than he thought or
the wrinkling of that button nose is all the translation he needs.
“It’s an American cigarette,” the older know-it-all girl pipes up again. Wisely, Dexter stomps out his cigarette on the ground, grinning and nodding at all the pretty girls. They are giving him the once-over like grown-up girls, his skinny legs poking out of his second-hand-store Bermuda shorts, his fly—which he notices is undone. Even though he is a grown man with a dopp kit full of dope and unused rubbers, he feels out of his league with this suave little flock.
“Where’s Yo?” Lucinda asks, looking over his shoulder as if Yolanda might be hiding in the hedges behind him.
“Oh, she likes a few hours to herself in the morning to write.”
Lucinda rolls her eyes behind the false eyelashes. Dex catches a resemblance—a glamour girl Yo, a Reader’s Digest condensed version of a thorny literary novel.
“I don’t mean, you know, real writing. She keeps a journal, that’s what I mean.”
“Tell me about it,” Lucy sighs. “Well, come on and join us then, won’t you?” Half a dozen pairs of the sweetest chocolate brown eyes double, triple, sextuple the invitation.
But on down the line, Dexter catches the long-suffering look on the young maid’s face. It gets him every time—some Southern guilt re-emerging so that he wants to rescue the servants in their color-coded uniforms. “Por favor,” he insists, reaching for her towels. The maid shakes her head shyly. “No, no señor.”
This one is wearing all-white which means she is a nanny. One of the aunts explained the system to him. The cook wears gray, though she has a dress-up version with a white collar and apron; the nanny wears all white; the two pantry maids, whatever that is—Dexter first understood panty maids—have salmon uniforms with white collars; the cleaning maid’s uniform is all black, though she, too, has a dress-up version with a white collar. “Are you going to put this in your article?” the aunt wanted to know.