To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him

by Gwendolyn Zepeda

  In second grade, I went to a school that had a special program for students deemed “gifted and talented.” We fed the government’s hunger for statistics by filling out forms several times a year. On the line above “RACE,” I copied what I had seen my father write many times: Mexican, hyphen, American. Later that would change to a mere check in a box next to “Hispanic,” and then a darkened bubble next to “Latino,” and then a write-in of “mixed” before, twenty years later, I finally decided it was none of anyone’s business. My best friend Fay’El was half-white and half-black, but she adamantly claimed the non-white half of her heritage and taught me to do the same with pride. One of the most popular girls in our grade was half Mexican and half Chinese. Although I felt comfortable with children of all races, I became increasingly aware, through my interactions with our classroom’s ethnic majority, that I was not really white.

  Now I only had to convince everyone else. We still lived in the same neighborhood. I knew that I now went to a better school than most of the other kids, and that my father made a little more money, and I tried to be gracious about it. I shared my Barbies with girls in the neighborhood. I learned enough Spanish to pay proper respect to their mothers. I walked to the corner store and supported my brothers and the neighborhood boys in their struggles against the video game consoles.

  Or maybe, sometimes, I wasn’t so gracious. Maybe I learned to show off by saying big words or writing cutesy stories, just like a smart-assed little white girl—pissing off the neighborhood kids but making our white teachers wish they could take me home and buy me candy and barrettes. Maybe only sometimes when I felt like a lonely little loser. I don’t remember for certain. It was a long time ago.

  My attempts to conform weren’t enough to please certain people. María from three blocks away decided she hated me because of the color of my skin. “Hey, bolilla!” she’d yell down the street. “Hey, pinche bolilla!”

  One day I gained the courage to yell back, “I’m not a bolilla!”

  “What are you then—a nigger?” she screamed laughing.

  Overcome by the foreignness of her logic and vulgarity, I turned and ran away.

  My submission to puberty brought about a change of status and expectations within my family. At holiday gatherings, I graduated from the games of the front yard to the conversation of the kitchen. I was allowed to perform the most junior of traditional tamale-making tasks—the spreading of the masa—while listening to the women talk. Sometimes the topic was me and the other examples of burgeoning womanhood in our family.

  “Whatever you do, don’t marry a Mexican,” our cousin Helen, who had married a Mexican, would tell us teenage girls. Her mother and all the others who’d married Mexicans or men of Mexican descent would laugh. Our cousins who’d married white men would laugh. Our cousin Joanne, a white woman who’d married into our mostly Mexican family, would laugh, too.

  “Go for the white meat, y’all!” Helen would tell us, while all the women laughed some more. Then, one of the cousins who married a white man was sure to say, “Don’t marry a bolillo, either. They ain’t any goddamned better.” And they would all laugh like witches, only pausing to hand a Budweiser to any husband who might poke his head into our kitchen.

  The more things changed, the more they stayed the bittersweet same. My fifth-grade class studied Greece for our big Christmas Around the World program. We made crepe paper aprons in yellow, red, and orange to layer over our skirts. The teacher asked if I could bring cookie sheets from home, and I encountered a language barrier. I didn’t know what “cookie sheets” were. We made our cookies on “pans” that we bought at the Goodwill or Fiesta Dollar Store. I told the teacher we had no cookie sheets at home, and she looked at me in a weird way. I surreptitiously checked my hair for tangles.

  A boy named Kyle told me I looked sexy. I ignored him, frightened by his red hair and freckled skin. I went back to work on my aprons, and the teacher gave me a note. A note to take to my parents.

  “White blouse and brightly colored skirt,” it said. There may have even been specific suggestions—red, orange, yellow, or bright blue. But it didn’t really matter what the note said.

  I watched my father and his mother hunched over a roll of dark green polyester twill, so dark green it was almost black. They were cutting out a skirt.

  When they got to the hem, I don’t know if they ran out of dark, dark green thread or if they were just tired, but they decided to fasten it with masking tape. “Pos, quit complaining, Gwendolyn. We don’t have money to buy things like all the bolillos at your school.”

  Another circle dance. This time we were running, sideways round and round, hands lifted high. I avoided Kyle’s gaze, which was steady on my lipstick. The tinny Greek music twanged and something pulled at my foot. Something rasped against the floor, then grabbed and stuck to my leg. I almost tripped over a long wad of dark green threads. My skirt! The masking tape!

  I couldn’t stop dancing. The multi-colored hands pulled me on and on. I stumbled and prayed not to fall as Kyle leered at me from across the circle. The red and orange and yellow and bright blue skirts flashed before my eyes. I wanted to cry.

  But I didn’t.

  My family hadn’t made it to that program, either. Afterwards, my grandmother asked me what in the heck I had done to my skirt. I shrugged and went to my room. Later I would sneak the Whitman’s chocolates from her bureau, along with the eye shadows that were yellow, green, and blue. I would look in the mirror and become the sultry dark-haired dancer— the exotic and deadly spy. I would make myself the same promises as always. No one could guess how sexy and powerful I would be when I grew up and went away.

  I Used to Steal

  It started with a roll of candies. Actually, I’m not even sure they were candies. They were hard square lozenges in dark green wrapping with a fancy font my six-year-old eyes couldn’t read. Probably either some imported mints marketed for adult tastes or, worse, just cough drops. They were like sugar plums children dreamed about it in stories they read to us in school. I didn’t know what they were, but I knew I was supposed to want them.

  My five-year-old brother had shown me how easy it was to put this roll of desire into my pocket. I suspect my mother had shown him before she went away. He had been her favorite, and she never let a lack of cash stop her from getting him what he wanted.

  I got as far as the door, but then my nervousness gave me away. My father made me give the candy to the clerk and apologize. My eyes stung with tears and shame. Satisfied with the completion of his duty as a single parent, my father led us out of the store and moved on with his life. He never caught me stealing again.

  There wasn’t much pleasure in the bubble gums and plastic jewelry I subsequently shoplifted, because the guilt always outweighed it. However, the gradual onset of poverty in our household led to more and more regular thievery of neccessities—food and clothes. Water. Electricity.

  I convinced myself that those with money expected it, anyway, and that the thrift stores deserved it for pricing their merchandise higher than their clientele could afford. I never stole from stores where the clerks had been friendly to me, or where the owners were elderly. I believed that a man who stole bread to feed his family wasn’t really a criminal. But at the same time, one thing led to another. There were needs I couldn’t deny, needs that bread couldn’t satisfy.

  We used to steal decadence. Not just bread to fill our stomachs, but cream puffs and éclairs to gorge on until we vomited into bus station trash cans.

  We used to steal glamour. We carried eye shadows, lip glosses, and magazines to the little alcove in the corner of the store. My brother, now eleven, had figured out all security camera angles. We each turned around and let the other two unzip our backpacks and filled our backpacks with the shiny merchandise and walked away smiling. We didn’t stop to watch the cashiers as they made the darker children check their bags at the door.

  Cigarettes and wine coolers followed this. A girl had to maint
ain her image. Unlike my brothers, I never went so far as to steal cars. I didn’t know how to drive.

  Several years and one miraculous surprise of a full college scholarship later, I left home. I got a job. I was ready to embark upon a new life as a good citizen.

  College life and good citizenship were a complete culture shock. I lived through freshman year as an uneasy spectator until I met a man who shared my vice. We stole together on nights and weekends, obsessing and giggling like it was kinky sex. We moved in together. We pilfered monkey wrenches from Montgomery Wards and wheelbarrows from Wal-Mart. Strolled into the grocery store wearing winter coats and took lipsticks, batteries, and packages of ham. All the things to make a happy home.

  One day, he got arrested. He’d been caught stealing a dress for me from Sears—a dress I’d pointed out to him as appropriate for my new job.

  Panicked, I called one of the well-off mentors of my high school years and confessed the whole sordid story. She drove me downtown to bail him out. Then she drove me to a faraway mall parking lot, where we sat in her BMW and talked for an hour about why stealing was wrong. Then she took me into the mall and bought me dresses and blouses and pants, saying that I should have told her I needed work clothes so badly. I was contrite. She never heard about me stealing again.

  I put on my work clothes and went to work. I resolved to be good. Then, one day, I went to Walgreens and decided that it was impossible to be good without a French manicure. But I couldn’t justify the expense of such a luxury. I fingered a box that had the face of a well-off woman. It contained moon-curved stickers and pink and white paint. I tucked the box into the waistband of my skirt. Wouldn’t Walgreens be proud to sponsor my success?

  College-educated arrogance and lack of practice had made me careless. A tiny device on the end of the box made the sensors near the exit squawk indignanyly as I passed. Everyone in the whole store turned to gawk as I tried to talk my way out of my situation with the cashier. He didn’t buy the excuse I made. Having settled on a career at Walgreens, he couldn’t comprehend the drive behind them. I was shown no compassion.

  A grim, lean woman in a uniform and badge came and dragged me by the arm to the freestanding “security office” two steps above the rest of the floor. I quickly summed up her type from my experience as a supple coed. She looked like the kind of woman who’d take me home and spank me to the rhythm of a loud country western song. I didn’t want to wind up in her handcuffs. I didn’t want to be the sweet young thing in a trashy movie about women’s prison inmates wrestling and glistening. Desparate, I found myself batting my eyes in order to strike a deal.

  She made me sign a shadily worded agreement to pay Walgreens $300 over the next year. She made me promise that I’d never enter her store again. I had let her get away with this without even buying me a drink.

  I choked down breaths of relief as I stumbled out of the automatic doors and into my car. And then a realization hit me. Paying for things actually had value. Paying for things was a contract—an opportunity to insure yourself against bondage and obligation.

  I realized what respectable life was all about: working a boring job all week in order to buy useless things all weekend. That was what it meant to be a consumer. Thus was the American way.

  Later I’d go back to the Walgreens with a more expensive hair-style, in my respectable corporate outfit and professionally done nails. The security guard would stop me at the entrance and say (firmly but not too loud), “Get out of my store.” Pushed back but not punched out, I’d go away and work harder. Buy myself more expensive things.

  The thrill of acquiring luxury items was the exact same whether I paid for them or not. So was the lack of fulfillment—the false hope of happiness constantly pursued. But that was a lesson I could learn at my leisure without the guardians of the American way manhandling my tender flesh. Without the threat of jail hanging over my hungry head.

  Aunt Jennie

  Ineed some of them copper bracelets for my arthritis. It’s acting up real bad. I was taking that Anapracin but I had to quit on account of my heartburn. I think I have an ulcer. I told that to Dr. Rajeem but he didn’t do nothing. Those Saudi Arabians have real ugly attitudes sometimes.

  Y’all need to come over tomorrow morning and have some chilaquiles. I’ll make ‘em real spicy the way your husband likes them. I know he has to work; just come early. Can you get up early? Boy, I tell you, I’m so tired. I got up at three thirty this morning. I couldn’t sleep ‘cause I had real bad pains in my chest. A real bad stabbing pain, like the kind your uncle had right before he had his heart attack. I didn’t get to sleep ’til one o’clock in the morning. I stayed up late working on the Mary costume for the church pageant. My arthritis was hurting so bad! But I told Father O’Neil three weeks ago I’d do it, and he needed it today, so I had to stay up late to cut it out and sew it.

  It came out so pretty. I made it purple with a pink sash. Not light pink—a real pretty, dark one. It came out real good. I took it to the church and I saw the Joseph costume that Lola Flores made. That woman can’t even sew. She made it red with a silver lamé belt. I don’t think silver lamé looks good, do you? I gotta go to Wal-Mart and get some gold lamé before the pageant tomorrow.

  I swear, that Lola Flores thinks she’s so good. She had that stupid mutt with her at the church. Father O’Neil tried to pet it and it almost bit his hand off. She said it was sick. You know how she talks: “My little Pepper’s not feeling good! I’m gonna take him to the Korean’s store and see if they can do some acupuncture on him!”

  I hope they get that dog and stick a needle in his eye. Then maybe he’ll quit coming over here and eating my Cinnamon’s food.

  A Big-Breasted Woman Is a Hard Thing to Be

  When I was a teenager, I had large breasts.

  Imagine the constant “accidents”:

  “Oh, excuse me. There’s a lot of people on this bus and I brushed against you by accident, young lady.”

  “Oops—the hallway’s real crowded, huh? Don’t mind me standing pressed against you with this leer on my face and the eventual erection you might feel against your leg.”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, madam. I didn’t see your breasts there under the water as I backstroked by and accidentally squeezed one of them in my hand. Do forgive me.”

  Picture the young male hospital volunteers who kept finding excuses to walk into my room as I nursed my firstborn child like a Wal-Mart-clad Madonna. I realized what they were up to, but I just sighed and went on feeding my baby. A roomful of strangers had just seen me open as wide as a woman can be, screaming curse words as I pushed a human being out of the part of me you couldn’t pay to view in soft-core porn. If these guys wanted to sneak peeks of my tired breasts leaking colostrum all over the sheets, I didn’t really care anymore.

  How many stories could there be? So many I forget them and they’re replaced and I forget those and they all become a wash—the foundation on which I stand as I strap on my reinforced underwire in the morning. The annoyances and humiliations fade like flowered lace, wear out like the hooks against my back, and I just reach in my drawer for more.

  My full-figured Aunt Sylvia told me a story from her youth. She grew up in the days when teenage girls regularly dropped out of eighth grade to take jobs at factories or downtown stores, including a version of Woolworth’s where they sold elegant veiled hats and gold watches instead of the condoms and cheap candy they offered when I was a teen. I listened, fascinated, as she told of saving up for the pink, three-dollar bra with extra seams, instead of her usual plain white one for only a dollar. She had ironed the precious pink bra so it would lie smooth under her uniform blouse. Instead, the iron had snapped it into the twin cones that we see in the tongue-in-cheek antique lingerie ad reproductions today. My aunt, with no other brassieres washed or aired for that day, was forced to go to her conveyor belt station with breasts that jutted out like missiles, pointed projectiles almost too sharp for men’s eyes. She told me about the o
ne special, kind young man who sometimes spoke to her, and of the narrow-eyed girl who painted her nails red and coveted that man for herself. She told how the mean girl, worldlier than my aunt, called the man over one morning and then asked my teenage aunt to please hop up and down a few times. My aunt—sweet, bosomy, and naïve, with soft brown eyes and billows of curly hair she couldn’t control—did as she was told, figuring there must have been a reason. Her boobs bounced. The bitch and all her friends exploded into the musical peals of laughter they probably practiced every night, and my aunt burned with shame, never to speak to the kind young man again.

  Even as I listened to that story, myself the same age that my aunt was on that evil day, I was able to understand the ways of the world. I said to her, “But, Aunt Sylvia, he probably liked it when your boobs bounced up and down.” Although I was by no means powerful, girls of my generation had been lucky enough to cast off at least half the naiveté. My aunt nodded, but bitterly, remembering opportunity lost.

  I imagined her reborn as a sort of superhero, walking around downtown with her pink satin torpedo breasts, wiping out injustice among sisters and causing the good strong men of the town to jerk off all night long.

  After a few minutes of that reverie, I remembered that I had to be downtown, myself, to meet classmates at the library. We said goodbye, Aunt Sylvia letting me leave the house with my own missile breasts exploding in the flimsy knit top I had outgrown the summer before. If I fought for anything the rest of that day, it was for the right to walk down the sidewalk in peace.

  God

  The other day a feminist friend asked me if I really believed in God. I said I did. She said, “But you believe God is a woman, right? Or, at least, that he’s half female?”