Caramelo

by Sandra Cisneros

  I’m too scared to run across the three lanes of traffic headed south and too scared to stay put. I don’t know what to do, the fear freezing me.

  —Celaya. Something says my name in a hard whisper. —Celaya. The voice is so sharp and clear and close to my ear, it hisses and sizzles and makes me jump. Celaya.

  Then I just take off on automatic, running and running, leaping off the guardrail and sprinting across the three lanes so fast, I don’t stop till I’m over by the grassy hill beyond the exit ramp. I fumble over the chain-link fence and heave up some burning phlegm. My body cold and hot all at the same time, my lungs hurting when I breathe.

  Celaya. Somebody or something said my name. Not “Lala,” not “La.” My real name. Who the hell was that, I think to myself. Who was that?

  When I cross over to the residential streets, my legs are trembling. Una viejita busy watering her porch plants looks up at me from her yard, a fat little bug-eyed dog wearing a Big Bird T-shirt yap-yapping at me from her side of the fence.

  —Shame on you, Maggie, Maggie’s owner scolds. But Maggie just keeps barking till I’m out of sight.

  I drag myself home shivering and sweating, words and feelings thrashing inside my chest like big black bats trapped inside my bones.

  When I get home, I lock myself in the bathroom, undress, and assess the damage, examining all the parts of myself that are bruised, or skinned, or throbbing.

  Celaya. I’m still myself. Still Celaya. Still alive. Sentenced to my life for however long God feels like laughing.

  73.

  Saint Anthony

  Father’s hands are numb from working on a set of lounge chairs for the Saint Anthony Hotel. Leather is rough on the hands. His hands calloused from tugging the twine hard and taut. After six days, he comes home and can’t untie his own shoes, his hands swell as fat as a mattress of needles. It’s a good job, one he can’t afford to pass up. We need the money, and landing the hotel account is something Father is proud of.

  But now his hands are as big as Popeye’s. He’s so tired he eats his dinner on a TV tray in the living room. —Please, a bucket of hot water for my feet and another one for my hands. Mother brings him two plastic buckets, one for each foot, and two dish tubs for his hands. Then Father just lies there splayed in his La-Z-Boy. Mother feeds him albóndigas, Mexican meatballs, with fresh flour tortillas, because that’s what Father loves best. She feeds him herself, as if she is feeding a baby.

  —Your father works hard, she says.

  74.

  Everything a Niña Could Want

  —¿Sola? But why would you ever want to be alone? You have everything a niña could want here. Why would you leave all this?

  Father waves a butter knife in the air, pointing around the kitchen. The window fan is stirring up the impossibly hot air from outside and pushing it inside. The kitchen table is full of bread crumbs and greasy with butter. Father is finishing his breakfast toast and a three-minute egg.

  I rinse another glass under the faucet and wash another dish without turning around to look at the splendors Father is pointing out to me. A refrigerator sticky with handprints nagging to be washed, a loaf of bread perched on top alongside the radio with the aluminum foil antenna and some cooking pots fuzzy with dust. Cheap kitchen cabinets with the varnish wearing thin. A creaky wooden floor bald in places, crying out for stripping and revarnishing. A set of kitchen chairs Mother found at the Salvation Army, don’t tell Father, with the seats all redone in what my brothers get a kick out of calling “Nalga-hide.” And the yard-sale kitchen table. Everything Father points to means work for me. Already the house feels too small, like Alice after she ate the “Eat Me” cookie.

  —It’s just that I want to be on my own someday.

  —But that’s not for girls like you. Good girls don’t leave their father’s house until they marry, and not before. Why would you ever want to live by yourself? Or is it … you want to do something that you can’t do here?

  —I just thought maybe I would want to try stuff. Like teach people how to read, or rescue animals, or study Egyptian history at a university. I don’t know. Just stuff like … like you see people doing in the movies. I want a life like …

  —Girls who are not Mexican?

  —Like other human beings. It’s that I’d like to try to live alone someday.

  —¿Sola? How? Why? Why would a young lady want to be alone? No, mija, you are too naive to know what you are asking for.

  —But all my friends say …

  —Oh, so your friends are more important than your father? You love them more than me? Always remember, Lala, the family comes first—la familia. Your friends aren’t going to be there when you’re in trouble. Your friends don’t think of you first. Only your family is going to love you when you’re in trouble, mija. Who are you going to call? The man across the street? No, no. La familia, Lala. Remember. The Devil knows …

  —More from experience than from being the Devil. I know, I know.

  —If you leave your father’s house without a husband you are worse than a dog. You aren’t my daughter. You aren’t a Reyes. You hurt me just talking like this. If you leave alone you leave like, and forgive me for saying this but it’s true, como una prostituta. Is that what you want the world to think? Como una perra, like a dog. Una perdida. How will you live without your father and brothers to protect you? One must strive to be honorable. You don’t know what you’re asking for. You’re just like your mother. The same. Headstrong. Stubborn. No, Lala, don’t you ever mention this again.

  When I breathe, my heart hurts. Prostituta. Puta. Perra. Perdida. Papá.

  75.

  The Rapture

  You’re supposed to love your mother. You’re supposed to think good thoughts, hold holy her memory, call out to her when you’re in danger, bid her come bless you. But I never think of Mother without dodging to get out of her way, the whoosh of her hand quicker than the enemy’s machete, the pinch of her thumb and index finger meaner than a carnival guacamaya.

  It’s Toto’s fault. On the first warm day of the season, when the sky is blue again and the wind so mild we can shut the space heaters off and open the windows, he comes home pleased with himself for finally coming up with something original. —Guess what! I’ve enlisted.

  Can you beat that? Mother’s Toto has turned conservative on us. They take him in June, the week after he graduates from Resurrection. And Mother’s been a terror ever since. Forget about running to Mexico, Toto won’t hear it. Toto says he’s cut out for the military. —I’ve never met anyone as pigheaded as you, Mother screams, disgusted, not realizing where he gets it from. What can you say to Toto after all and everything? He’s eighteen. He’s made up his mind already. He doesn’t want to be a mama’s boy forever.

  I don’t blame him. Viva’s right, sometimes you’ve got to help your destiny along. Even if it calls for drastic measures. Father says the army will do Toto good, make a man out of him and all that shit. But what’s available to make a woman a woman?

  If I could, I’d join up with something, too. Except I don’t know who would have me. I’m too young to belong to anything except the 4-H Club, and forget about that.

  Look, I don’t mean to spook anybody, and you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I swear this is true. Every time I so much as step in the Grandmother’s bedroom off the kitchen, the smell of fried meat just about knocks me out. Mother says I’m imagining it, and the boys say I’m just telling stories.

  That’s why I go back to sleeping on the living room couch, and how it is Toto nabs the room as his. Lolo warns me it’s his after Toto moves out this summer, and I tell him no problem, he can have it.

  I don’t care. I don’t care about anything anymore. I don’t go to the thrift stores with Viva or Mother, and I don’t hang around downtown after school. Viva makes me sick. And Mother. Mother’s never been on my side about anything.

  I can’t explain it except to say they don’t even know who the hell I am.
This is what hurts me the most. Viva too wrapped up in Zorro, and Mother too wrapped up in Toto. I don’t mean to come off sounding like Eeyore, but it’s the truth. Father would like to think me and Mother are friends, but what kind of friend can’t hear you when you’re talking to her? I’m tired, that’s all.

  I blame Mother with her crazy projects. Mother who insists we fix the back apartment and get it rented, but who’s going to fix it? Father’s in his shop, the boys busy with their after-school jobs. That leaves me and Mother battling dust and decay. The house, like a big bully taking our puny blows, watching and laughing at us.

  I can’t live like this is all I’m saying.

  When I don’t expect it. When I’m alone. When I don’t want it to. The Grandmother comes and gets me. When I shut my eyes. A furious heat behind the sockets, deep inside my head, from somewhere I can’t even pinpoint. Like light, or a dance, or a tattoo needle, because there’s no name for what I’m naming. And it’s like a doorbell or a fire alarm without a sound. It comes, and if I will it not to, it rolls in even stronger like a wave.

  I know when I open my eyes, she’ll be there. As real as when she was alive, or, if you can imagine this, even more alive now that she’s dead. Her. The Grandmother. With her stink of meat frying.

  The first time I realized it was that day I ran across the interstate, and since then the Awful Grandmother just keeps appearing. She drops cleanser in the tub from behind the plastic shower curtain when I’m peeing. She clears her throat and coughs when I swear. Her chanclitas flip-flop behind me from room to room. Leave me the hell alone!

  Mother says that when her mother was alive, she used to tell a story about the day all the pots in the kitchen sang. Every pot and pan, glass and dish crashed and banged and rattled one morning. This was when all the kids were at school and her husband at work, and she was home alone in bed with the baby. What was she to think? A thief in the house? And if so, what could she do? After what seemed like forever the crashing stopped as sudden as it had started. When she was brave enough to get out of bed, she and the baby finally peeked into the kitchen, expecting to find a mess. But look—everything was in its place. The glasses and cups on their shelf, every skillet and pot hanging still from its nail. She looked about—nothing. She checked the doors and windows—locked. Then she remembered the recent death of her brother. Is that you, Serapio? Do you want me to pray for you? Because over there they believe if somebody dies but hasn’t settled his business on Earth, their spirit hangs around tied to the world of the living, rattling dishes or leaving a door open just to tell you they’ve been there.

  That’s why I think the Awful Grandmother, who couldn’t let go of everyone else’s life when she was living, can’t let go of this life now that she’s dead. But what does she have to do with me?

  —Vieja metiche, I hear myself muttering like my mother. —¡Vieja metiche! I shout good and loud sometimes. I don’t care who hears me.

  It was bad enough when she was alive. But now that she’s dead, the Awful Grandmother is everywhere. She watches me pee, touch myself, scratch my butt, spit, say her name in vain, watched me with my scarf come loose and one shoe untied running across Interstate 35. My clothes fluttering in the wind. And I should’ve kept running. I should’ve let a fender take me. ¡Te llevo de corbata! Take me already!

  At meals, I space out, staring at the Mexican calendar that’s been hanging on the kitchen door since 1965. A charro carrying off his true love, a woman as limp as if she’s sleeping, a sky-blue rebozo draped around her shoulders, the charro wearing a beautiful woolen red sarape, the horse golden, the light glowing from behind his sombrero as if he’s a holy man. If you look close, you can see the silver trim on his trousers, hear the creak of the tooled-leather saddle. The night sky cold and clear. Behind them a dark town they’re running away from, maybe. The moment before a kiss or just after, his face hovering above hers. El rapto. The Rapture. And for a moment, I’m carried out of here on the back of that horse, in the arms of that charro. Until somebody yells, —Pass me the tortillas—and snaps me back to reality.

  To wake up sad and go to sleep sad. Sleep a place they can’t find you. A place you can go to be alone. What? Why would you want to be alone? Asleep and dreaming or daydreaming. It’s a way of being with yourself, of privacy in a house that doesn’t want you to be private, a world where no one wants to be alone and no one could understand why you would want to be alone. What are you doing? That’s enough sleep. Get out of there. Get up now. People drag you like a drowned body dragged water-sodden from a river. Force you to talk when you don’t feel like it. Poke under the bed with a broom till they scuttle you out of there.

  —What’s wrong with you? Mother asks.

  —I’m depressed.

  —Depressed? You’re nuts! Look at me, I had seven kids, and I’m not depressed. What the hell have you got to be depressed about?

  —Since when do you care? I say to Mother. —All you ever worry about is your boys.

  And for the first time I think Mother is about to slap me. But instead she starts yelling. —You spoiled brat, selfish, smart-mouthy, smart-alecky, smart-ass, I’ll teach you. There are tears in her eyes that she won’t let out of her eyes. She can’t. She doesn’t know how to cry.

  It’s me who winds up crying and running out, the screen door banging like a gun behind me.

  —Come back here, crybaby, Mother shouts good and loud. —Where you going? I said come back here, huerca. I’m talking to you! When I catch you I’m going to give you two good conks on your head with my chancla. You hear me! Do you hear! Then you’ll know what depressed means.

  76.

  Parece Mentira

  If I had to pick the last person on the planet I’d ever fall in love with, Ernie Calderón, it would be you. The goofiest. Honest to God. Completely out of it. Look at you. You dress like you’re still in the sixth grade. Striped polo shirts and white jeans—and not even bells! Sneakers instead of boots. Hair as short as if you’re in the military. Not a trace of a beard or mustache, not even a little bit of sideburns. And where did you get those funky black glasses? At least get wire-frames. To top it off, you’re too short for me. You look ridiculous. How did I ever wind up with somebody like you?

  Father likes you, though. He would. You’re the type fathers like. Safe. That’s what you are. The kind who goes to confession every Saturday and to mass every Sunday. —Un good boy. That’s what Father says when Toto brings you home from school one day and announces, —This is Ernie. Because you look like what you are, Ernie. A good Catholic Mexican Texican boy.

  Somebody comes up with the idea of starting a band, and then there’s no avoiding you. You and Toto screeching away on electric guitars, Lolo with his god-awful trumpet, and Memo banging on paint cans pretending he’s a drummer. Bits and pieces of Santana, Chicago, Grand Funk Railroad, because you haven’t learned to play a whole song yet. Thank God Mother makes you practice out in the garage apartment, but even if you were over at Father’s shop on Nogalitos Street, I bet we could still hear your sad, slow-motion version of “25 or 6 to 4.”

  That’s how it is you start coming around. First for the jam sessions, and then because of the after-school business my brothers and you start, doing yard work, mowing lawns, hauling and cleaning trash.

  Ernie.

  Honest to God, at first I don’t even notice you. Who would notice you? And then the next thing you know, you’re very beautiful. Or very ugly.

  Depending. But isn’t it always like that with love?

  Before love. And during. During changes you. I don’t know how it is after. I’ve never really been in love with anyone before except for Lou Rocco in the fourth grade and Paul McCartney, but they don’t count. That wasn’t love, was it?

  Ernie.

  It’s the time of the meteorite showers. You drive over in your funky white truck, the one you and the boys use for the lawn-mowing business, a big clunky pickup full of dents and rust and dirt. I’ve never seen a falling sta
r.

  —What, never?

  —Never.

  —Not even in Mexico?

  —Nope.

  —So come with us.

  Because it’s you, and my brother Toto, and me, Father lets me go, can you believe it? But Toto wants to meet friends downtown and play foosball first. And then it winds up we drop him off and promise to come back for him later. That’s how it is we drive up north to the Hill Country, you and me, Ernie.

  Ernie.

  You’re nothing but a big baby. A big chillón. Worse than a girl. Any little thing and your feelings get hurt. How I know is this.

  On the night of the falling stars, we don’t see any stars. Not a goddamn one. It’s too cloudy. We sit outside in the bed of the pickup, and you ask, —Want to hear a song I wrote? And before I can answer, you leap out, haul out your guitar from the cab of the truck, and start playing.

  Not bad. Until you open your big mouth and start singing. Way off-key. I mean way off. Perdido estoy. Yo siento el Destino llevándome a tu amor, tu amor, tu amor.

  At first I think you’re kidding, and I start to laugh. Until you put your guitar back in its case, snap it shut, and won’t look me in the eye. A terrible silence. The sound of the wind, the sharp scent of cedar. In the darkness, your eyes glinting.

  What a girl you are, but I don’t say this. How can I? You aren’t at all like my brothers, are you? You’re not like anybody I’ve met. Except for me. Swear to God. Swear to God, Ernie, and I think to myself, I promise I’ll never make you cry again. And I won’t let anyone else make you cry either. This is what I’m thinking.

  —So what’s your real name? I ask.