Caramelo

by Sandra Cisneros

  —Do I have to?

  —Read! Father orders.

  REYES CASTILLO, INOCENCIO

  To you who answered the call of your country and served in its Armed Forces to bring about the total defeat of the enemy, I extend the heartfelt thanks of a grateful Nation. As one of the Nation’s finest, you undertook the most severe task one can be called upon to perform. Because you demonstrated the fortitude, resourcefulness and calm judgment necessary to carry out that task, we now look to you for leadership and example in further exalting our country in peace.

  [signed] Harry Truman

  The White House

  The INS officers simply shrug and mumble, —Sorry. But sometimes it’s too late for I’m sorry. Father is shaking. Instead of —No problem, my friend—which is Father’s usual reply to anyone who apologizes, Father runs after them as they’re getting in their van and spits, —You … changos. For you I serving this country. For what, eh? Son of a mother!

  And because he can’t summon the words for what he really wants to say, he says, —Get outta here … Make me sick! Then he turns around and comes back in the shop, pretending he’s looking for something in the stack of fabric bolts.

  We drive back home in silence, the chicharras droning in the pecan trees, the heat a wavy haze that rises from the asphalt like a mirage. Father looks straight ahead like a man cut out of cardboard.

  When we pull up the driveway, I send Ernesto home and tell him to forget about it, forget about everything. —Tomorrow, maybe? Should I come back and ask him tomorrow?

  —Just will you quit it already, Ernesto, I hiss. —Leave me alone!

  Even before we open the door, there’s a terrible smell from the kitchen, worse than beans burning—Mother’s home-cooked dinner! Mother has a fit. —All that work, for what? For your shit! I’ve had it!

  It’s the closest Mother’s ever come to breaking down and crying, except Mother’s too proud to cry. She tears off one shoe and throws it against the living room wall on top of the television set before locking herself in the bedroom. I think Mother was aiming at the Grandmother’s portrait, or maybe the ones on either side, la Virgen de Guadalupe or the one of LBJ/Kennedy, I’m not sure. But the shoe strikes the wall, leaving a big black scuff mark like a comet and an indentation we have to plaster with spackle and paint over when we move.

  Father scratches his head with both hands and stands in the living room blinking. The house a mess. Drawers open, couch cushions on the floor, dinner burnt and stinking, Mother locked in the bedroom. And here’s Father with his shoe box, a few papers, his wooden domino box stuffed with my childhood braids, the Grandmother’s toffee-striped caramelo rebozo, which he wraps around himself like a flag.

  —Sick and tired, he says, slumping into his orange La-Z-Boy. For a long time he just sits there guarding that box of junk like the emperor Moctezuma’s jewels. —My things, he keeps muttering. —You understand, don’t you, Lala? Your mother … You see? You see what happens?

  It’s like when I was little. —Who do you love more, your mother or your father? I know better than to say anything.

  Almost immediately after, somebody takes down the double portrait of LBJ/Kennedy. And just as soon as the susto is over, Father is on the telephone to anyone and everyone who will listen. Monterrey. Chicago. Philadelphia. Mexico City.

  —Sister, I’m not lying to you. So there I was, it was my word against the government’s … You don’t have to believe me, brother, but this happened … What a barbarity! Compadre, who would believe this could happen to me, a veteran … It’s an ugly story, Cuco … But to finish telling you the story, cousin … And there you have it.

  And there it is.

  79.

  Halfway Between Here and There,

  in the Middle of Nowhere

  Father comes home with the news, and the words cause my heart to freeze. —We’re going home.

  Father had a big fight with Marcelino Ordóñez of Mars Tacos To Went that ended with Father cursing his old friend Mars of long ago, cursing all Chicanos for acting like Chicanos and giving Mexico a bad name, cursing the borrowed fifty dollars, the Second World War, the savage border, this rinky-dink stinky calcetín of a Texas town, then heaving into a flash flood of tears at the memory of his mother.

  —I curse you and the mother who bore you, Father said. Well, not exactly. What he really said was a little stronger, but, since he is my father, I can’t repeat it without some disrespect.

  I curse you and the mother who bore you. At the word “mother,” Father remembers the wheeze in his heart. —¡Ay! madrecita, if you’d lived to be a thousand years, it would not be enough! And it’s as if at that very moment his mother is putting a pin through his heart to see if he’s still alive, as if his mother is holding him again in her soft, fleshy arms. Mother with her smell of food fried in lard, and that smell the smell of home and comfort and safety.

  Mars raised the rent on Father’s shop again.

  —I’m losing money. Building needs repairs. See that crack? Whole damn foundation’s about to buckle, I kid you not. And the roof is leaking. And taxes. What else can I do? Ain’t rich, you know.

  Father picks on a tack on the bottom of his shoe. A whole lot of nothing, Father thinks, to explain who knows what.

  —You it was who called la Migra!

  —What’chu talking about, man?

  —You it was. You called la Migra. Explain. How is it the Immigration only came to my shop that day, and not yours, eh?

  —Man, estás zafado. You shitty chilangos always think you know everything!

  —Baboso. Can’t even speak your mother tongue!

  —I can speak my mother tongue all right, but you can bet it ain’t Spanish.

  The words turn from bad to ugly to worse until how it ends is this.

  Father has to move.

  We pack up the compressor, the sawhorses, the pegboard of hammers and scissors and tack strippers and clamps, the rolls of cotton batting and bolts of fabric, the webbing, coil springs, Italian twine, yardsticks, chalk, staples, and tacks, disassemble the homemade cutting tables and shelves, the slouched books of fabric samples in ring binders, the prize Singer one-eleven W fifty-five.

  When the shop is almost empty, Father tugs at his mustache and looks out at the street, past the red and yellow letters of KING UPHOLSTERY, to something beyond that we can’t see.

  —Estoy cansado. Sick and tired, Father mutters in his funny English. —Make me sick.

  Nogalitos. Old Highway 90. Father remembers too clearly the route south, and it’s like a tide that tugs and pulls him when the dust rises and the cedar pollen makes him sneeze and regret he moved us all to San Antonio, a town halfway between here and there, in the middle of nowhere.

  That terrible ache and nostalgia for home when home is gone, and this isn’t it. And the sun so white like an onion. And who the hell thought of placing a city here with no large body of water anyway! In less than three hours we could be at the border, but where’s the border to the past, I ask you, where?

  —Home. I want to go home already, Father says.

  —Home? Where’s that? North? South? Mexico? San Antonio? Chicago? Where, Father?

  —All I want is my kids, Father says. —That’s the only country I need.

  80.

  Zócalo

  There is only one bed in the entire Hotel Majestic that isn’t a single. Can you believe it? Una cama matrimonial is what Ernesto asks for, and una cama matrimonial is all there is, literally. The Hotel Majestic makes its money on Mexico City tourists, not honeymooners. Lucky for us, that one bed is ours. Room 606, a corner room on Madero and the main plaza—el Zócalo, a little noisy, the desk clerk warns, because of the rooftop cafe, will we mind? We won’t.

  Ernesto’s Monterrey cousin gets us the room. He’s a travel agent and has connections with the “O-tel Ma-yes-tic.” That’s how we get a cheap deal for the week, and the no-questions-asked about my lack of a visa. Papers? Andrew Jackson’s face on a twen
ty.

  Room 606. The most beautiful room in the world! Our cama matrimonial crowned with an iron headboard as elegant as a Picasso. Candelabra sconces on either side too. A little plaster angel on one wall. And tall French windows wearing a crooked pair of nubby curtains, and white sheers that look great when the wind blows through them. Because of Mexican Independence Day, buildings are draped with strings of colored lights, and strands of the green, white, and red climb like a spiderweb along the whole facade of the Hotel Majestic, including room 606.

  Perfect. I try to memorize everything so I’ll never forget it the rest of my life. And to top it all off, there’s a huge mirror on one wall, so big you wonder how the workmen ever got it upstairs without laughing. As soon as the bellhop disappears, Ernesto and I jump on the bed like little kids, leap at each other, happy as dolphins.

  The ceiling with its scrolled molding like frozen cream pies.

  —Did I ever tell you, Ernesto, how we always had to share food? When you have nine people in a family, you can never buy luxury food like Lucky Charms cereal. You get cornflakes. Like that. You could never get anything just for yourself. But once in a while, if Father went shopping with us for groceries, he’d buy something deluxe, like a Morton frozen pie. Except after we divided it among so many people, we only got a tiny sliver, a piece from four to five o’clock, hardly enough to satisfy you. Once I saved up my money and bought a whole pie, just for me. Strawberry, I remember it was. I ate a wedge as wide as twelve o’clock to seven. Then I was satisfied, and only then did I offer any to my brothers. That’s how I feel here in this room. Like I got the whole pie.

  Viva’s right, about destiny I mean. About helping it along sometimes. I feel like I’m in a movie, my arm against the pillow, Ernesto’s shoulder against the sheets. Me living my life, and me watching me live my life. Like some great movie. Better than a cheesy movie, because I’m in it.

  It’s wonderful to lie on a bed after sleeping on a bus for two days. I unpack the caramelo rebozo and drape Ernesto in it. When I rummaged the walnut-wood armoire for my birth certificate just before leaving, I grabbed the Grandmother’s rebozo on an impulse. “Good lucky.” Ernesto looks beautiful in it, I’m not kidding. That boy body of his, hairless and smooth, the candy stripes against his skin. A real sin men don’t wear rebozos.

  Ernesto pulls me toward him, but I push him away, so I can look at him a little longer. Whenever Father eats anything especially delicious, he always force-feeds me a bit. —Prueba, try it, he says, holding something so close to my face I can’t see it. Ernesto’s like that, pushing himself so close to me, I can’t stand it. And I almost wish he’d shut his eyes so I could watch him without having him watch me.

  —Lalita, he says, calling me by my baby name. —Lalita.

  All the parts of me coming back from someplace before I was born, and me little and safe in the warmth of that name, well loved, myself again. The syllables making me arch and stretch like a cat, roll over with my belly showing, preen. And laugh out loud.

  —Once I’m pregnant, then they’ll have to give us their blessing, your ma and my father, I mean. Then they won’t be able to say anything, and we can get married.

  —Will you forget about them for now, Ernesto says, gathering my face in both hands as if I’m water.

  We’re thirsty, thirsty. We’re salt water and sweet. And the bitter and the sad mixes with the dulce. It’s as if we’re rivers and oceans emptying and filling and swelling and drowning one another. It’s frightening and wonderful all at once. For once, I feel as if there’s not enough of me, as if I’m too small to contain all the happiness inside me.

  We fall asleep to the noise of el Zócalo, the rush of traffic. The green, white, and red lights draped across our window blink on and off, casting shadows in the room. When we wake, our room is dark, the bulbs have quit their flickering. Trash tumbles across the empty square. Here and there a few stragglers wander home. Ernesto comes up from behind and presses himself against me, me and him leaning out on the balcony taking in the Mexico City night.

  A huge Aztec moon rises above the Presidential Palace.

  —Man, Lala, just think! Everything happened in this square. The Ten Tragic Days, the Night of Sorrows, the hangings, shootings, the pyramids and temples, the stones taken apart to build the mansions of the conquistadores. It all happened right here. In this Zócalo. And here we are.

  But I’m thinking of the women, the ones who had no choice but to jump from these bell towers not so long ago, so many they had to stop letting visitors go up there. Maybe they’d run off or been run off. Who knows? Women whose lives were so lousy, jumping from a tower sounded good. And here I am leaning on an iron balustrade at the holy center of the universe, a boy with his hands under my skirt, and me with no intention of leaping for nothing or nobody.

  Some old guy in a fedora cuts a diagonal across the plaza, and just when he gets to the the circle of light of a fluted lamppost beneath our window, just stands there and looks up, as if he can see us on the sixth floor of the Majestic leaning out the balcony of room 606. He’s a thin man wearing clothes from the time of before, wide tie, big-shouldered, double-breasted suit like an old gangster movie. He bends down to tie his shoe but doesn’t take his eyes off me. He looks like my father. He looks as if he’s pissed. As if he knows. But he can’t really see what we’re doing, can he?

  And just when I’m beginning to worry, the bell towers begin to clang. Midnight. The witch’s hour. That man down there just looking up at me, lighting a cigarette, taking his time standing there, and I want to push Ernesto away, and I want Ernesto to stay, and the bell towers of the church clanging and clanging in alarm, in protest, holding in a howl that could shake all the bats from el Zócalo. That dizzy joy, so when the moment rises and shivers and passes, and the church quits its riot, there’s only me laughing my witch’s laugh.

  The man down there is gone. Like if he’d never been there.

  At 6 A.M. the reveille and drum from the soldiers in el Zócalo raising the Mexican flag.

  Ernesto and I tumble and toss and bury ourselves under blanket and pillows till they quit, an unbearably long time it seems. In my half sleep, I hear the ticking motor of a van and think it’s Father. Then I remember where I am. Father’s miles from me.

  We fall into a delicious half-sleep just as the city is waking, revving up to go, and the main heart of the revving is right here at the center of the universe …

  El Zócalo. The Mexico City Monte Carlo Grand Prix. Vroom-vroom. Cars howl, VW taxis the color of M&M’s putt-putt, a police siren yowls, brakes squeal, motors grunt, a stalled engine whinnies but won’t turn, the first few notes of “La Cucaracha” play on a fancy car horn, motorbikes bleat, horns toot-toot an impatient trumpet tap, motors flubber, blurt, fart, hiccup, belch, rumble in the screech of a left-hand turn, a heat rises, the light in the room bright even with the curtains closed, a truck gurgles, growls, an endless roar of engines heaving and pulling in a great wave like the ocean, a coughing, sputtering, gargling of motors and wheels, while a hubcap pops and flips and rattles to a stop like a drum finale.

  Then the bells of la catedral begin to clang, all twelve of them, one at a time, like a woman banging on the bars of her cell demanding to be let out.

  Above us, the horrible grating of iron chairs being dragged across tiles, the restaurant opening for breakfast. There’s so much racket reaching room 606 it’s laughable. Just when I fall back to a lukewarm sleep, I dream this dream. Ernesto kissing the instep of my foot. When the door clicks shut, I wake up, and I’m alone.

  On the bedside table, a gardenia in a toothbrush glass; a half-smoked Cuban cigar; five snuffed votive candles to la Virgen de la Macarena, the Virgin of the matadors; and a plate with half a cantaloupe rind. When I get up to pee, I find a note written on the mirror with soap—WENT TO MASS.

  I go back to bed. On the opposite wall, the little plaster angel frowns at me. It looks like the little angel under la Virgen de Guadalupe. In fact, it i
s the same angel.

  The plaster angel starts it:

  —Your grandmother’s rebozo. And with the Church as witness. And that man who could’ve been your father watching. You should be ashamed.

  —I should be ashamed … How come I’m not?

  —Válgame, San Rafael, says the little angel. Then he begins with his you-oughts and you-shoulds, and that’s when I get really mad.

  —Shut up! But when he won’t, I throw my sandal at him. That makes him quit, and I feel better.

  —Pain in the ass, I say, opening the French windows. The morning breeze plumps open the white sheer curtains, the heat and the noise of el Zócalo comes in even stronger. The light powdery like silver dust. There are no volcanoes in sight under all the smog, only the merciless Mexico City light.

  I watch the world below going about its business, crisscrossing, a speaker blasting a fuzzy version of “Waltz of the Flowers,” brilliant masons lining up for work, beggars begging, women selling pink meringue cakes, vendors of cream of abalone, emery board sellers, students, clerical workers. Everything has always been here, will always be here. Millions of citizens. Some short and stocky, some lean and tall, some charming, some cruel, some horrid, some terrible, some a pain beyond belief, but all of them to me beautiful. In fact, the most beautiful in the world.

  I think about walking over to La Villa, just to see what my grandmother’s house looks like, just to walk around the neighborhood, but I can’t move. I write in my journal. I lounge around wearing Ernesto’s T-shirt and tell the housekeeping maid to go away. I order breakfast flautas and eat these in bed with the wind blowing the white sheers in and out, puffing them up, whipping them out, a mouth exhaling, inhaling.

  Every once in a while I stand at the balcony and take it all in. I’m so happy I feel like shouting, but what would I say? There aren’t enough words for what I’m feeling. I consider writing a song and fill eleven pages in my journal with babbling, a tiny knot of handwriting so tangled and tight it looks like crocheting. Maybe hours go by, maybe minutes, I don’t know or care.