Caramelo

by Sandra Cisneros

  What else could Eleuterio do but laugh, since any words he tried to speak came out sounding like gargling. He laughed, then—a hacking fit that frightened his relations into thinking he was having another attack. Because he no longer had a language to explain himself, Eleuterio’s laughter arrived at what appeared to be odd moments. The family thought him a little senile since his resurrection, though inside that sluggish sea of body, he was stranded on an ice floe, hopelessly alert.

  Fortunately, Eleuterio Reyes retained his ability to play the piano, if only with his right hand, and this perhaps saved him from jumping off a church tower. He composed some uncomplicated, entertaining pieces, and it was here he found solace from the world that did not understand him. His music was quick, elegant, lithe, and as overly romantic as ever. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t. With the gentlemanly manners of another era, a pencil, and imagination, Eleuterio Reyes composed several waltzes that revealed, if anyone had taken the time to listen, how explicitly naive and youthful he still was. The soul never ages, the soul, ball of light tethered to that nuisance the body.

  Eleuterio Reyes was trying his best to rise from the ashes of his near-death, and the Mexican nation was doing the same. So it happened that Narciso returned at a time when Mexico City was busy with balls, benefits, and fundraisers, as if reconstruction began by filling a dance card. Who could blame the citizens? Men were tired of jumping over dead bodies. Women were sick of grieving. The city, like its troops, was exhausted, sad, and dirty, disgusted with seeing ten years of things they wished they hadn’t seen, ready to forget with a fiesta.

  In the decade of war, Mexico City had cheered a great confusion of leaders. The morning that Madero marched triumphantly into the city, the citizens shouted vivas. When the Ten Tragic Days ended and Huerta assumed power, the church bells rang and high masses were said in his honor. A short time later, when Huerta fled, they rang again as if to say, —Good riddance. Women stood on balconies throwing kisses and flowers to the victorious Villa and Zapata,* who marched in like caesars, and the city whooped again when it was Carranza, and just as sincerely for his rival, the one-armed Obregón. It wasn’t that they were fickle. It was peace they were welcoming, not leaders. They’d had enough of war.

  For Regina the war had meant an opportunity at finding her true calling. As in all wars, those who flourish are not the best people but the most clever and hard-hearted. Regina’s little commerce not only sustained the family through difficult times, but prospered and moved them up a notch in economic status. Now their apartment was packed with enough furniture to make it look like La Ciudad de Londres department store. Narciso had to climb over brass cuspidors, musical birdcages, obscene mirrors bigger than beds, Venetian finger bowls, crystal chandeliers, candelabras, carved platters, silver tea sets, leather-bound books, past paintings of nude chubbies, and portraits of chaste teen nuns taking their vows.

  All the beds served as counters for displaying linens, even the one Regina slept in; she simply made a little room for herself at the foot of it, beneath velvet antimacassars, Oriental pillows, fringed draperies of satin and chintz and brocade, towers of embroidered sheets, towels, and pillowslips with monograms of the original owners. Every room was mobbed with furniture in the popular colors of the time, royal reds and purples—a suite of Louis XVI furniture, high-back wing chairs, horsehair love seats, damask chaises, Queen Isabella carved sideboards, brass beds complete with silk curtains and canopy, caned Art Nouveau settees and Victorian chairs.

  On the hour a variety of fragile clocks chimed, some with dancing figurines, some with cuckoos, some with a few notes of a popular waltz, like an aviary of noisy birds. Fringed piano shawls, carved wooden trunks, punched-tin lanterns, musical instruments, fluted glassware, engraved cigarette cases, crocheted bedspreads, hand-painted fans, plumed hats, lace parasols, dusty tapestries, ivory chessboards, gilt sconces, bronze and marble statuettes, gilded vitrines, Sèvres china chamber pots, glazed urns, silverware and crystal and porcelain, jewel inlaid boxes, lacquered Chinese screens, Aubusson carpets, zinc bathtubs, and, under glass domes, tortured saints, weepy madonnas, and pudgy baby Jesuses. More is more. It was a style of decorating that was to figure prominently in this and succeeding generations of the family Reyes.

  —Look how we live now, son. Like kings!

  —You mean like Hungarians, Narciso said.

  —What are you saying, my life?

  —I said precioso, Mother.

  When Regina had instructed Narciso to take off his shoes on entering the apartment, he’d thought she meant it so as not to disturb his father, but then realized it was to save wear and tear on the carpets and furnishings.

  —Be careful. Everything’s for sale, Regina said.

  All day people knocked on the door to deliver items or to take them away. Indians arrived with ayates, slings strapped around the forehead and hanging on the back, and with this they were able to carry away items ten times their weight, just as Regina’s daddy had once done. Under monstrous loads, humble as worker ants, they ambled off to deliver an armoire or a couch or a bed at a given address. Regina did better business than El Monte de Piedad, the national pawnshop. The desperate came to pawn their inheritance. Quite a few left welted by an ugly lash of bad words or in the misery of tears, and some of these were men!

  A great deal had changed while Narciso was gone. His mother, Regina, counted her earnings nightly and hid them in a shoe box in the walnut-wood armoire next to the red bandana housing his three ribs and the box with Santos Piedrasanta’s button. His father, Eleuterio, had turned into a half-mad invalid whose drooling speech everyone ignored except Soledad. And Soledad? The homely housegirl had grown up into a slender young woman with stingy breasts and a stingy ass, but sweet all the same to look at, really. Ah, those funny Charlie Chaplin eyebrows and the dark little eyes beneath them. She was cute, almost pretty, honest, she was sweet, he had to admit. How was it he hadn’t remembered?

  Soledad had become especially talented at translating Eleuterio’s tantrums and tears to his family. —He says he has a craving for a bowl of sweet potatoes and milk. He says you’d better not even think of selling his piano, or he’ll smash everything in sight. He says you have the manners of a Pancho Villa.

  —He told you all that?

  —More or less.

  Poor Soledad. She understood Eleuterio because she was as mute as he was, perhaps more so because she had no piano. It was best to say only what one absolutely had to, just enough but not too much, better to not get in the way if the señora was suffering her migraines. All she had was the caramelo rebozo, whose fringe she plaited and unplaited, which was a kind of language.

  Poor Eleuterio. A great grief filled his heart each night, and he suffered helplessly, witnessing his son, Narciso, sneaking into the kitchen pantry after dark. Eleuterio grunted and hit the wall adjoining his wife’s room with his cane. Regina arrived with a cup of manzanilla tea.

  —What is it, old man?

  She had called him this as a joke when they first married because of their age difference, but now it was the truth and said out of affection.

  —Thirsty, viejo? Here you go, then.

  Eleuterio warbled, yelped, and whined.

  —There, there, you go to sleep now. Is it because I sold your old mattress today to the postmaster’s family? No, don’t think anything of it, my fatty. I’ll get you a nice new mattress tomorrow, and you’ll sleep just like a baby, right? Pobrecito. Drink up your tea.

  She gathered him squirming like a child, swaddled him tight in her rebozo, and fed him her manzanilla tea with a spoon.

  —That’s my good boy. Don’t you worry, everything’s going to be just fine.

  What else could Eleuterio do but swallow.

  * There were many revolutions within the revolution, so that at times certain factions were patriots and at other times were dubbed rebels, hounded by the very same government they had once supported. Case in point, Emiliano Zapata, who led the indigenous fo
rces from Morelos, the subtropical region just south of Mexico City, a group fighting for their ancient land rights. Pancho Villa was an outlaw turned rebel leader who controlled the desert border states. These two powerful chieftains, “the Attila of the South” and “the Centaur of the North,” and their followers met in a historic encounter in Mexico City midway through the war. In any good Mexican restaurant today you’ll see a sepia photo documenting the event—a cheerful Villa sitting in the presidential chair while a feral Zapata glowers suspiciously at the camera.

  For a Hollywood version of the Mexican revolution, see Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata. John Steinbeck wrote the screenplay. His choice for the lead role was none other than the Mexican movie star Pedro Armendáriz, featured in The Pearl. Armendáriz had the sexy, indigenous looks for the job, and, more importantly, the acting skills, but was unknown in the States. Kazan, however, wanted and got Marlon Brando for the part, who, in my opinion, looks ridiculous with his eyes taped slant trying to pass as Mexi-Indian.

  33.

  Cuídate

  People said, —Now that you’re a señorita, cuídate. Take care of yourself. But how was Soledad to know what they meant? Cuídate. Take care of yourself. Hadn’t she taken care of her hair and her nails, made sure her underclothes were clean, mended her stockings, polished her shoes, washed her ears, brushed her teeth, blessed herself when she passed a church, starched and ironed her petticoat, scrubbed her armpits with a soapy cloth, dusted off the soles of her feet before getting into bed, rinsed her bloody rags in secret when she had “the rule.” But they meant take care of yourself down there. Wasn’t society strange? They demanded you not to become … but they didn’t tell you how not to. The priest, the pope, Aunty Fina, la Señora Regina, the wise neighbor lady across the street, las tortilleras, the pumpkin-seed vendor, las tamaleras, the market women who gave her back her change with this added pilón, —Take care of yourself. But no one told you how to … well, how exactly.

  Because wasn’t a kiss part of the act of loving? In truth? Honestly, now? Wasn’t a kiss the tug of a string, a ribbon, a dance, a thread looped and interlocked that began with the lips and ended with his thing inside you. Really, there was no way once it began for her to find where or how to stop, because it was a story without beginning or end. And why was it her responsibility for her to say enough, when in her heart of hearts she never wanted it to end, and how sad she felt when it was over and he pulled himself away and she was just herself again, and there was nothing left of that happiness but something like the juice of the maguey, like cold spittle on her thighs, and each person went back to being just themselves.

  For a little, for a moment as fine as una espina de nopalito, she felt as if she could never be lonely, she felt she was not herself, she was not Soledad nor was he Narciso, nor rock nor purple flower, but all rocks and purple flowers and sky and cloud and shell and pebble. It was a secret too beautiful, to tell the truth. Why had everyone kept such a marvel from her? She had not felt this well loved except perhaps when she was still inside her mother’s belly, or had sat on her father’s lap, the sun on the top of her head, her father’s words like sunlight, —Mi reina. She felt when this man, this boy, this body, this Narciso put himself inside her, she was no longer a body separate from his. In that kiss, they swallowed one another, swallowed the room, the sky, darkness, fear, and it was beautiful to feel so much a part of everything and bigger than everything. Soledad was no longer Soledad Reyes, Soledad on this earth with her two dresses, her one pair of shoes, her unfinished caramelo rebozo, she was not a girl anymore with sad eyes, not herself, just herself, only herself. But all things little and large, great and small, important and unassuming. A puddle of rain and the feather that fell shattering the sky inside it, the lit votive candles flickering through blue cobalt glass at the cathedral, the opening notes of that waltz without a name, a clay bowl of rice in bean broth, a steaming clod of horse dung. Everything, oh, my God, everything. A great flood, an overwhelming joy, and it was good and joyous and blessed.

  34.

  How Narciso Falls into Disrepute Due to Sins of the Dangler

  Well, how do you like it so far?

  Some parts not so good. But not so terrible either. Go on, go on.

  Honest to God, there’s no pleasing you. Look, if I would’ve known telling this story would be this much work, I wouldn’t have bothered. What a whole lot of lata. Nothing but trouble from start to finish. I should’ve guessed it. A tangled string, I’m not lying. So what was I telling you?

  You were telling about how happy Narciso and I were.

  Ah, yes … happiness.

  It could be said, and quite accurately, too, Narciso Reyes came replete with his twenty-two-volume histories, like a set of encyclopedias. He was, after all, un hombre bonito. You might ask what a pretty man like Narciso Reyes saw in his not-so-pretty cousin Soledad.

  But not so ugly!

  But in his sexual preferences, Narciso was not fussy. He was neither heterosexual nor homosexual exactly. He was … how shall I put it?… omnisexual. That is, he was a normal man. However, if you told him this, he would be mortified. Like most men, he did not know his own truth. If truthful we must be, then it must be said he found everything in the universe sexually inviting. Woman. Man. Boy. Papaya. Crocheted pot-holder. The Milky Way. Any and all were possibilities, real or imagined.

  Before her induction into love, Soledad had been as neuter as a stone …

  I hate when you do this to me.

  … as pure as a silk rebozo, and as innocent as if she had been castrated before birth. And she had been. Not by any knife except an abstract one called religion. So naive was she about her body, she did not know how many orifices her body had, nor what they were for. Then as now, the philosophy of sexual education for women was—the less said the better. So why did this same society throw rocks at her for what they deemed reckless behavior when their silence was equally reckless?

  Why do you constantly have to impose your filthy politics? Can’t you just tell the facts?

  And what kind of story would this be with just facts?

  The truth!

  It depends on whose truth you’re talking about. The same story becomes a different story depending on who is telling it. Now, will you allow me to proceed?

  And who’s stopping you?

  Like all novitiates, Soledad sincerely believed the piropos Narciso tossed her, a word in Spanish for which there is no translation in English, except perhaps “harassment” (in another age, these were called “gallantries”). —¡Ay! Mamacita, if I die who will kiss you? —How sad there isn’t a tortilla big enough to wrap you up in, you’re that exquisita. —Virgen de Guadalupe, here is your Juan Dieguito! She’d never had anyone say such things to her. Who could blame her for feeling grateful to the man she looked up to as honorable and well educated, her social superior.

  —Don’t tell anyone, but you’re my favorite!

  It made her heart ping! How was she to know it was just a piropo? Something a man says to one, and then to several others.

  —Don’t tell anyone, but you’re my favorite!

  It was not a lie exactly, but an untruth. She was his favorite. At that precise moment. A moment can be eternal, can’t it?

  Soledad could not have known Narciso was not singling her out among all women, but simply enjoying her as his birthright. Was she not “la muchacha,” after all, and was it not part of her job to serve the young man of the house?

  That Narciso. It was as if Destiny had assigned the universe to echarlo a perder, to indulge him and cast him to rot, but no, that’s not true. It was as if he’d arrived at birth marked “Damaged Goods,” ruined beyond reparation, a route begun before the first kiss his mama planted on him when she’d inspected what she’d ejected and turned and admired her good piece of labor, her fine jewel, her delectable handiwork. Delighted his mama was to see he was born lighter than herself. She pinched the mauve genitals to test if it was true, —This is how you can te
ll. Yes, he would be güero, fair. The world would be kind to him.

  It was a shame Narciso had not read that illustrious and educational book of his great-great-grand-other Ibn Hazm and paid close attention to the chapter “On the Vileness of Sinning.”* Had he been fortunate to have been schooled by his early ancestor, then perhaps Narciso Reyes would have saved himself a lifetime of grief. But it is true we are but an extension of our ancestors, our several fathers and many mothers, so that if one thinks about it seriously and calculates, at one time hundreds of years ago, thousands of people were relatives-to-be walking across villages, passing each other unknowingly in and out of tavern doorways or over bridges where barges rolled quietly beneath, without knowing that in years to come their own lives and those of contemporary strangers would merge several generations later to produce a single descendant and twine them all as family. Thus, in the words of old, we are all brothers.

  But who listens to what is said of old? It was youth, that amnesia, like a wave sliding forward and then sliding back, that kept humanity tethered to eternal foolishness, as if a spell was cast on mankind and each generation was forced to disbelieve what the previous generation had learned a trancazos, as they say.

  So it was when Eleuterio decided to intervene and give his son some much-needed if too late advice. He could see his son coming and going into the kitchen at night even if Regina pretended not to. He was not blind. But he was mute. After the supper dishes had been collected, when he and Narciso were alone drinking their milk coffee, Eleuterio looked across the table at his son.

  My son, listen to me, Eleuterio thought, looking at his boy. The Devil knows more from experience than from being the Devil.

  Narciso sipped his coffee and read a sports newspaper.