Caramelo

by Sandra Cisneros

  But to finish telling you the story, it was 1950 and there we were, so in love and wanting to get married, except I was too afraid to tell my parents. Your grandfather was very strict, because of the military, but your grandmother, what was her excuse? You think she was bad by the time you knew her, but back then, well, you have no idea, and why should I even tell you, but believe me, she was strict. That’s why he said, “Normita, you know better than I your parents will never give us permission to marry.” This was because he’d already been married, and lo más triste, in a church. Plus he was a lot older, almost twenty years older than me, and to make matters worse he was a bit chubby and much-too-much-too Indian for Mother to approve. She was always concerned with el que dirán, the what-will-they-say.

  And so he said to me, “Normita, there’s only one way for us to marry; that’s for me to steal you.” And I said, “Well, all right, steal me.” And so I let myself be stolen and that’s how it was we married finally.

  —Stolen! Like kidnapped? All for love, that’s too cool, Aunty. Your life would make a terrific telenovela. Did you ever think about that?

  —And so, I was married, but what good did that do me when your grandmother found out? “What, are you stupid or just pretending to be stupid?” My own mother said this to me, can you believe it? “What, are you stupid or just pretending to be stupid? As long as his first wife is still alive, your marriage is just paper. You may think you are married, but in the eyes of God you’re nothing but a prostitute.” Those words, they hurt me even now, Lalita.

  —Wait, Aunty. I’ll get us a box of Kleenex.

  —Gracias, mija. But I was telling you, I went to live with my husband, right? Except it was as if I went to live by myself, because my husband’s work as a tire salesman took him all over the republic. Sometimes he was gone for weeks at a time. And it was after one of his work trips that everything went from bad to worse.

  We’d been quarreling. It was one of those stupid arguments that begins with, “And your family …” “But what about your family!” A fight without end. He had just come back from out of town. He’d left mad and came back worse. There was something odd about him that night. Something. Almost as if he deliberately wanted to fight with me. A woman can sense these things, believe me. By the end of the night neither of us was talking, and he just threw himself on the bed like a pile of laundry and started to snore. He worked so hard. I felt terrible after a while, seeing him sleeping like that, so completely exhausted, el pobre.

  It filled me with love to see him sleeping so soundly, I just wanted to make up with him, so I lay down and put my hands like this, under his T-shirt, just so I could rub his back and say, “I’m here, corazón, I’m here.” And what do I feel on his back but scratches, big welts. I turn on the lights and pull up his shirt, and ask, “And this?” But he couldn’t say a thing, could he?

  What a howl I let go! Like if they’d put a pin through my heart. I broke everything that was breakable and cursed and cried, and how could he bring another woman’s scratches to our bed, and I don’t know what. The neighbors must’ve enjoyed that fight. He was so upset he left. For days he didn’t come home, and then I get a note saying he was staying with his family in Jalisco. I went a little crazy. Oh, I suffered, Lala. I was all right in the day. In the daytime it was easy to be brave. It was when I lay down to sleep, that’s when I’d let myself cry.

  —Why is it sadness always comes and gets you when you lie down?

  —Maybe it’s because we talk too much in the day, and we can’t hear what the heart is saying. And if you don’t pay attention, then it talks to you through a dream. That’s why it’s important to remember your dreams, Lala.

  That’s why when I started to dream the dreams about a telephone ringing, I took it as a sign that I should call and forgive him. I even went to la basílica to ask la Virgencita for this strength, because by then my heart was as knotted and twisted as those rags the faithful wrap around their legs to walk to church on their knees. I lit a candle and prayed with all my soul, like this, “Virgencita, I know he’s my husband, pero me da asco, he disgusts me. Help me to forgive him.”

  And I know this sounds crazy, but it was as if a big rock rolled off my heart in that instant, I swear it. I walked home from La Villa like an angel, as if I had wings and was flying. When I got to the corner where we lived, I was practically running, I knew I had to telephone him. He was supposed to be staying with his family, right? But every time I called, guess what. He wasn’t there. And again, “Oh, he’s not here.” Each time I called his relatives, they wouldn’t let me talk to him. “Well, fíjate, he’s not here right now.” “Oh, how is it he’s not there?” “Well, he stepped out.” And like that, and like that. Of course, I was worried. Till finally one night I got it in my head to call the only hotel in that wretched town and ask for my husband at the registration.

  Oh, Lala, never phone a man in the middle of the night unless you are brave enough to know the truth. You can always tell when a man has a naked woman lying next to him. Don’t ask me how, but you can. There’s a way men have of talking to you, or, rather, of not talking. The silences. It’s what they don’t say that’s the lie.

  “Are you alone? Is there someone there with you?” “Well, of course not, my life.” But, Lala, I could hear sounds in the background.

  —Like what kind of sounds?

  —Well, like a zipper zipping. Like coughing, like water, like what do I know? Like someone. But I just knew. There’s some things you just feel right here, you know. Right here I got a sick feeling, like if my heart was a limón being squeezed. ¡Pom! And I just knew.

  “Do you love me?” “Of course I do.” “Do you? Then say it.” “… Why?” “Just say it. Say you love me. Say it, canalla. Say you love me, say it!” “… I love you.” “Now, say my name. Say, I love you Normita.” “… I love you, Normita.” And me laughing a little laugh like a witch, a hee-hee-hee from I don’t know where. And at that moment I was a witch, wasn’t I?

  Everyone knew how the story was going to end except me. Isn’t that always the case with love? He’d been hanging out with too many güeros. That’s where he got such foreign ideas. So that after we broke up he wanted to keep calling me, can you believe it? “Can’t we just be friends?”

  “Friends? What do you think I am, una gringa?” That’s what I told him, Lala. “What do you think I am, una gringa?” Because that’s how los gringos are, they don’t have any morals. They all have dinner with each other’s exes like it’s nothing. “That’s because we’re civilized,” a turista once explained to me. What a barbarity! Civilized? You call that civilized? Like dogs. Worse than dogs. If I caught my ex with his “other,” I’d stab them both with a kitchen fork. I would!

  When I went back home to live with my parents with their terrible I-told-you-so’s, the first thing I did was get rid of anything and everything he had ever given me, because I didn’t want any part of him contaminating my life, right? When we were novios we had our names written on a grain of rice by one of those Zócalo vendors over by the cathedral. It was just a cheap gift, but it had meant a lot to me then.

  I put that grain of rice inside my pocket, and the next Sunday when I went to the Alameda I fed it to an ugly pigeon. That’s how mad I was. Oh, seeing that pigeon swallow that rice gave me a pleasure like I can’t tell you.

  “Normita, you’re better off,” everyone said to me. “You’re young, you find yourself another to erase the pain of the last one; like the saying goes, one nail drives out another.” Sure, but unless you’re Christ who wants to be pierced with nails, right?

  For a long time after, I’d just burst into tears if anyone even touched me. Sometimes it’s like that when somebody touches you and you haven’t been touched in a long time. Has that ever happened to you? No? Well, for me it was like that. Anybody touched me, by accident or on purpose, I cried. I was like a little piece of bread sopped with gravy. So when anything squeezed me, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. Have
you ever been that sad? Like a donut dunked in coffee. Like a book left in the rain. No, never? Well, that’s because you’re young. Your turn will come.

  One of my girlfriends said I needed to see un curandero. That would cure me. “Look, you need to go somewhere by yourself and have a good cry,” he told me. “It’s that I don’t have any privacy,” I said. “Well, why don’t you go to the forest?” That’s when I realized how unaware men are about the world women live in. The forest? How could I go there? A woman alone. Because that’s what I was, more alone than I’d ever been in my life. I was alone, and the person who loved me was a piece of red thread unraveling. Thank you, good-bye. And when I die, then you’ll realize how much I loved you, right? Yes, of course. That’s how it always is, isn’t it? I dreamt a dream; I opened my wallet, but instead of money, there was a row of starched handkerchiefs, and I knew I had a lot of tears to spend.

  I just wish he would’ve said, “I hurt you, Norma, and I’m sorry.” Just that, I don’t know, I don’t know. If only he’d said that. Maybe that’s why I still hate him!

  —But if you hate him so much, Aunty, what’s the point? Why does it even matter?

  —Look, I wouldn’t hate him if I didn’t love him. Only people you love drive you to hate, don’t you know that yet, Lalita? The ones you don’t give a cucumber for, who cares what they think, right? They’re not worth the bother of being upset. But when someone you love does something cruel, ¡te mata! It can kill you or drive you to kill, ¡te mato! You know that pobrecita who came out on the cover of ¡Alarma! magazine, the one who made pozole out of her unfaithful husband’s head? Qué coraje, ¿verdad? Can you imagine how mad she must’ve been to make pozole out of his head? That’s how we are, we mexicanas, puro coraje y pasión. That’s what we’re made of, Lala, you and me. That’s us. We love like we hate. Backward and forward, past, present, and future. With our heart and soul and our tripas, too.

  —And is that good?

  —It isn’t good or bad, it just is. Look, when you don’t know how to use your emotions, your emotions use you. That’s why so many pobres wind up on the cover of ¡Alarma! Me, I put my anger to good use. I used it to make a life for myself and Antonieta Araceli. You be careful with love, Lalita. To love is a terrible, wonderful thing. The pleasure reminds you—I am alive! But the pain reminds you of the same thing—¡Ay! I am alive. You’re too young to know what I’m talking about, but one day you’ll say, “My Aunty Light-Skin, she knew about life.”

  —And you’ve never looked for him again, Aunty? Never?

  —For what? A woman doesn’t want a man who is going to kill her with jealousy. Believe me, better to be lonely than jealous. Loneliness is one thing. I know about loneliness. But los celos, Lalita, for that there’s no cure.

  But listen, I tell you in secret, Lala, after everything, after all these years, after all the humiliations, after everything, everything, everything, everything, I love him still. I’m ashamed to say it, I love him still … But, well, that’s ended now.

  Now, my queen, time to go mimi.

  —To sleep! But how, Aunty? You were going to tell me about … about him.

  —Oh, another day, Aunty’s tired of telling stories. Come, kiss me, my treasure … Lalita. Understand, only to you have I told this story, because you’re la gordita de la perra, Aunty’s favorite, and una señorita now. But don’t tell the others or their feelings will get hurt, promise? Now, off to sleep with the fat little angels. Remember, only you have heard this story, my heaven. Sólo tú.

  * The marvelous Café Tacuba on Tacuba, number 28, still operates today, serving traditional Mexican fare, including Mexican candy desserts hard to find anywhere else in the capital, though I always ask for the same thing—the tamales and hot chocolate. Señor Jesús Sánchez, of Oscar Lewis fame, once worked there as a busboy.

  56.

  The Man from Mars

  Several kilometers before the border, the Grandmother finally falls asleep, with her head thrown back and her mouth open. Father drives without saying a word. It’s too hot to talk. Same as always, whenever we’re near the border, no one feels like moving. Toto, Memo, and Lolo finally shut up and give us a break, lulled by the movement of the van. Mother escapes the way she always does when the Grandmother’s with us, lost in her own thoughts.

  What little breeze comes in the windows just makes you feel like fighting. It’s worse when we finally stop. Nuevo Laredo is dizzy, dusty, and airless. A kid with crusty eyes tries to sell us Chiclets, and the Grandmother shoos him away with a swat and a, —Váyase, chango apestoso. She’s in a terrible mood. When we finally drive through customs, she tells the border officials what she thinks of them. And just for that, they make us get out of the car while they search everything we own, including the walnut-wood armoire sleeping in the trailer!

  The Grandmother meant to be sad and weepy when crossing, to hum the Mexican national anthem, or recite perhaps that little poem from childhood, “Green, White, and Red.” —Now how did it go? Verde, blanco, y colorado, la bandera del soldado … She was, after all, leaving her homeland.

  Weeks before, the Grandmother, who’d always sworn Mexico was the most burro of all nations, suddenly turned nationalist. She kept singing “México lindo y querido” over and over. But with the heat and confusion, when we finally get to the border, she forgets to be patriotic and instead crosses the international bridge cursing the corrupt border agents, the U.S. government, the Mexican government, the last three Mexican presidents and their wives who wear too much makeup. What upset her was the loss of her mangos. She doesn’t quit complaining all the miles after we cross the border either. By the time we stop in San Antonio for dinner, a hot three and a half hours later, she’s still harping about those mangos.

  —I tried. But, ay, to bring across Manila mangos is harder than trying to bring across Mexicans. What are mangos, for God’s sake? I know a woman who crosses practically every weekend with a brassiere full of sleeping parrots. Look, you pour a bit of mescal down their beaks, and then they snore like babies, tuck them under a loose dress and there you have it. Pocket money for Christmas.

  But I wasn’t so lucky with the mangos. They were this big, I swear to you. And heavy too. Sweet, sweet, sweet, what with it being mango season and all. Pity the border agents seized them. If you had put them under the dirty clothes like I told you, lazy girl! You can bet those desgraciados enjoyed our mangos for lunch. Because Manila mangos are sweeter. I’m not lying to you. Manila mangos are the best, that’s why they don’t let them pass. That’s why you never see Manila mangos in the States. Those border agents, they know what’s good.

  Ay, what I would give for a Manila mango right now with a little lemon and chile. I myself prefer the Manila mango shaped like a plump fish over el Petacón, the round parrot-colored mango one buys here in the States, don’t you? But, ay, the Manila mango can only be bought in Mexico, that country where sweets are sweeter, isn’t that so? Before I left I ate Manila mangos day and night to satisfy my craving for them. Did I get sick? No, not at all. Imagine when I saw street vendors with their pyramids of orange mangos as we drove away. A wealth of mangos spilling out from the flatbed of trucks like Cortés’ gold. “Look, mangos,” I said to my granddaughter, but she just shrugs like the badly raised child she is. The day of my good-bye party I ate two mangos before lunch at my neighbor’s house even though it was rude to ask if I could have them before being offered. And then I ate another at my comadre the widow Marquez’ house, the last mango in the house and maybe she was saving it for her son, but it sat in a nice basket on top of the fridge letting out its sweet perfume that tells you, “Come and eat me, I’m ready.”

  She’s talking to a man named Mars, a friend of Father’s from the war. Marcelino Ordóñez is his name, a little rooster of a guy in dark glasses with a deep, raspy voice and big white teeth, the kind that could maybe pry a nail from a wall. On each sunburnt arm a tattoo. Betty Boop on one arm and la Virgen de Guadalupe on the other. Mars owns the ta
quería on South Nogalitos Street, where we’ve stopped for dinner.

  —As a matter of fact, I started out with just this one restaurant …, Mars begins.

  Mother sighs, and says to no one and everyone, —I’m bored …

  —But now I own everything from here to the fire station, Mars says proudly, pointing to a strip mall of one-story shops painted so white it makes you squint.

  —¡A poco! the Grandmother says, as impressed as if he is pointing to the Taj Mahal instead of a string of crumbly storefronts.

  I don’t see what’s so special. The crown jewel is the corner shop, where we’re seated, and it’s nothing to brag about. A sticky bunch of Formica tables and chrome kitchen chairs, a few plastic booths that could use new Naugahyde, the smell of fried meat and Pine-Sol like a million other little taco joints. MARS TACOS TO WENT. A huge sign facing Nogalitos Street, old Highway 90, the route we used to drive to the border before they built the new interstate. Maybe Mars thought he was going to get a lot of through-traffic, and maybe in the old Highway 90 days he did. But I-35 whooshes past beyond view, just making the signboard shudder.

  —The name was my idea, Mars explains, —instead of “Tacos to Go.” Any jerk can think of that, right? I wanted something with a little more snap to it, little more pizzazz. Something that says speedy service. So I named it “Mars Tacos to Went.” Pretty cool, eh?

  Mother rolls her eyes and sighs.

  —Want to know what’s the secret to success around here? Real estate! Mars continues. —Hijo’esú, you should see what kind of barganzas you can find in San Anto’. It’s the best-kept secret. Here, take a newspaper with you, you’ll see, Mars says, pressing a free weekly on us.

  Mother perks up. Even the Grandmother is interested.

  —You boys need to come to San Antonio, Mars says, addressing my brothers, who are paying more attention to their plate of enchiladas than to investment tips. —Make yourself a bundle, Mars continues, —I kid you not. I’ll teach you cats how to be millionaires before you’re thirty. Buy yourself a fixer-upper. Live off the rents …