A Place to Stand

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Before Grandma comes and makes me help her work, I run out of the house, crossing the fields to the old red-brick school to visit Grandpa. I’m always complaining that I’m too sick to attend school, and my grandparents indulge me. Besides, I can only speak Spanish, and Grandma is against speaking English and prefers that I stay home as long as I can. Grandma lets me go there after school to be with Grandpa. He lets me sprinkle cottonseed oil on the dust mop, and I help him push it down the long hall. We start playing. My voice echoes in the hall with squeals of excitement as I dodge and squirm and duck under his arms and run. He spins around, growling, “Here I come, I’m going to get you!” He corners me and I’m balled up laughing with delight on the floor. I go into a classroom and draw on the chalkboard, spin the globe on the teacher’s desk, and leaf through pretty picture books. Later, when I get tired of helping, I fall asleep on the floor in the gym, comforted by hearing Grandpa shaking the dust mop and running the wax buffer. When he wakes me it’s dark outside, and he carries me back home under the stars and moon on his shoulders.

  Those days were almost happy enough for me to forget my parents, and in the hole I returned to Estancia time and time again in my mind, living as if I were there, feeling the sun on my skin, watching hawks glide above the village in the sharp blue sky, just as I had as a child. The vivid reality of my reveries made these imaginary excursions so forceful it scared me. It became much more than idly remembering this or that. I’d play a memory like a song, over and over, adding this or subtracting that, changing something in a scene or re-creating a certain episode and enhancing it with additional details. Fearful I might be losing my sanity, sometimes when I came back to the present, I’d call out my name in the cell just to hear it or bang the steel door until my hands hurt. But, whatever was happening, I felt a wholesome fulfillment that delighted me, even in this dark pit. Memories structured my day and filled my cell. It was as if all the sorrow, fear, and regret I’d carried in my bones suddenly was swept away and my heart lifted itself into a realm of innocence before all sadness and tragedy happened. In my imagination I was safe and joyous again. The darkness of my cell glowed with the bright dawn light of Estancia. The walls of my cell slowly disintegrated into trees and a pond and village people coming out of their houses. The ritual of re-creating my young life repeated itself every day after meals, almost without effort. The instant I closed my eyes, I’d picture myself back in Estancia, hear my six-year-old voice talking with my friend Mocoso as we walked along a dusty road, slipping into the brush to reach the creek and follow its cool, meandering current through groves of cottonwoods and boulders.

  We play outside, roaming the village, exploring the alleys, the pond, the buildings on Main Street and the railroad warehouses. We start at the pond in the park on the south side of town. I lean over the flagstone border and claw up handfuls of weed, dripping mud as minnows scatter. I hop on the flagstone border, taunting la bruja, the legendary witch who lives in the water. Mocoso warns me to stop; she might grab us and drown us like she did this kid Fernando a few years ago. We play on the swings and the teeter-totter, roll in the grass, and pitch pebbles, making them squirt up across the water. Perfectly still on our stomachs over the water’s edge, with its reflections of tree and sky, we watch fish spurt to catch an insect skimming the surface. I cup handfuls of the sweet cold water from the natural springs that feed the pond. A truck rumbles by, carrying Mexican field workers, a large silver drinking bucket tied to its tailgate. Steam drifts from its radiator as it bounces and bangs down the dirt road toward the tracks. Behind us, in the yard of one of the houses, cows and goats spar, bucking vigorously, as hens squawk and roosters crow; from a window, Spanish mass comes from a radio. “El Espiritu de Dios se mueve, el Espiritu de Dios se mueve dentro mi corazón” The spirit of God moves within me, the spirit of God moves within my heart.

  We talk to Mr. Gonzalez’s mule, whom we’ve named sordo, deaf one, because he never listens; he just stares and doesn’t want to come to us. On the way to wherever we’re going, we climb over piles of firewood stacked in yards by front doors. At one, we watch Rudolfo cutting wood, and as he swings his ax we try to catch the resinous chips scattering in the air until he tells us to stop; we might get hurt. He frees the blade and swings again, cracking a log in half, and tosses the chunk on the pile. As we walk, Mocoso and I make our muscles dance. We compete to see who can flex and jiggle biceps better. Mocoso does better birdcalls and he tries to teach me but I can’t do them. I lift my shirt and bloat my belly to a huge balloon, my cheeks puffed as I hold my breath. He laughs, and ropes of snot dangle from his nostrils. We walk backwards until we stop in front of the old crumbling mansion with white scrolled porch pillars, corbel edges, and trimmed filigree eaves cracked with age. It’s a haunted house, where a rich gringo once lived. Mocoso says he was mean to the village people, and the wind made a tree break and fall on him. Ghosts live in the house, and during winter the cows huddle in the empty rooms for shelter against the blowing snow and freezing wind. We continue, following a goat path from the water tower, going west. The path’s weeds and grass go from dark to light, thick to sparse stubble, then open to a run of hard clay bordered by short tough yellow grass. We talk about things we really don’t understand, about rich white men who stole land and bandits who roamed the plains, and as we talk we add new details to the stories to make them even more scary and exciting. We turn south, into tall cattail reeds, and follow a shady, meandering stone path and clamber over field machinery and defunct livestock pens. The path snakes under rusting cattle cars, dismantled windmills, and diesel engines and around old boxcars whose rusting insides are filled with straw, vagrants’ rags and wine bottles, and crusty beads of sheep manure, cow dung, and bird droppings.

  We turn east. The path burrows under the Torreon Times, a bimonthly ranching-paper office, no longer used and boarded up, where old men now meet to sun themselves every morning. Its glass is dulled blue by tobacco and wood-smoke resin from a time when the old ones met inside by the potbelly stove and read the paper and talked. Dead flies and insects in webs hang from old iron lamps standing on the windowsill. We go north, as the path undulates up and under root-cracked foundations, driving straight toward shaggy cottonwoods. It pierces through abandoned warehouses, once used to store sacks of pinto beans, the best-tasting beans in the world. The old railroad tracks that come up to the loading dock doors are buried in sand. The path goes under great beams caved in from above, and in the rafters sparrows leap and chirp in gaping holes in the ceiling. The beams crisscross on the ground, creating a playground for us to play around in for a while. Sometimes a startled chicken squawks out from under a crevice or a snake slithers into a pile of old tools and flour sacks.

  We reach the town water tower again and sit down against one of the great steel trestle legs. I look up at the narrow ladder that leads to the top. I don’t realize how high it really is until Mocoso picks up a dirt clod and tries to hit the E of Estancia. We throw dirt clods for a long time, aiming at the large black letters painted across the silver tank. The dirt clods stick puffs of dirt where they hit. We decide on an easier target, the church butane cylinder. The gravel stones hitting it make a tinny clang and pigeons scatter from the roof bell. Mocoso wants to go bug my Cousin Stella and her boyfriend, necking in the end zone on the football field, but I tell him she’ll beat us up.

  After promising to meet Mocoso tomorrow at the pond, I take off for Grandma’s. It’s near dusk, a time when people withdraw into their homes and a somber lull falls over the pueblo and I have no words to describe how I love what I see and feel: the wispy trails of smoke from chimneys, the small stone grottos of La Virgen de Guadalupe and San Martín de Porres by doors, the aura of religious resolve that pervades the pueblo, the feeling that people have always lived here with the assistance of saints who watch over them and bless each day. Above me, the red harvest moon rises in the western sky, and large owls hoot in trees. As I run, I remember midnight rides with my father fro
m Estancia to Santa Fe; me telling him, Go faster, catch the moon, it’s just over the next hill. He swigs from his whiskey flask, and tells me the moon looks like it’s close but it’s really far away in the sky. But I believe it’s close, and dashing to Grandma’s, I make the same wish I’d made a hundred times when I was with him. Looking up at the sky, I promise myself that tomorrow, Mocoso and I will check the foothills to find the moon’s home.

  My sleep and waking rhythms were all mixed up, whirling as I was through the gray zone between the cell and the village. I kept time of day and night with meals and shift changes. Whether I was awake or in an altered state or sleeping, Estancia was never far away. In my imagination, the more I visited Estancia, the more there was to see and do. I wanted to know more about it, to get into every person’s heart and know what happened to each of them: what changed them, why things turned out as they did. I wanted to understand both the joyous and the tragic sides of their lives. Day and night, half conscious, I was consumed by the other world, always in an altered state, even when I was awake. I couldn’t help but feel wonderful, and I couldn’t stop myself as I went back into my memories again because of the peace it brought to my body, soul, and mind. I felt an affirmation of who I was; the person I’d almost buried forever became stronger in me. Returning to the cell from my memories, I’d find myself regenerated, despite the lack of sleep.

  I went on like this for weeks, reliving the fable of my life, rediscovering from my isolation cell the boy I was and the life I’d lived. Beyond the dark and the two-inch-thick steel door, during days and nights, I’d hear keys rattling, guard boots stomping up and down stairwells, muffled screams from other isolation cells, water pipes quaking. I’d sit and listen to the sounds until they blended into the house in Estancia.

  From the kitchen I listen, in bed, to Grandpa shoving piñon into the woodstove to stoke it for the evening. Grandma is toasting tortillas on the stovetop so they’ll be ready for the morning, with Santiago in the kitchen whispering over his coffee his anger at Refugio’s drunkenness. I nestle closer to the body heat of my brother and sister next to me in bed and fall asleep. During the night, a familiar scent of cologne wakes me. I get up quietly and stand beside the hall door, peering in the kitchen. My father sits at the table, holding yet another pair of new shoes for Grandma. She has many other shoes he’s brought her in the closet, none of which she could ever wear because her toes are gnarled so badly she would have to cut the shoe tips off. I know he brings shoes to her as an excuse to get information about where my mom is. He pushes the box across the kitchen table.

  “Paris shoes,” he says, sifting pocket change through his fingers.

  She starts to get him a plate of beans and tortilla.

  “Open the box,” he urges, annoyed, needing a drink.

  She takes the lid off the box and puts the shoes aside and strokes the tissue. “It’s good for altar matting.” She’s almost blind from cataracts and stares blankly at him as she rubs the paper with her fingers.

  There’s a mystery about him, his dark crumpled suit, starched white shirt, his worried features. I want to go to him and hug him but I’m afraid. Drawn by the scents of whiskey, cheap woman’s perfume, and cologne, I step into the kitchen and stand in the corner, anxious and excited at the same time. His gold ring, watch, and cuff links flash, hinting at the gambler’s life he leads. His eyes have a weary sadness, from drinking and remorse, and as he sees me he hesitates, caught off guard; then he opens his hands toward me and I run past the woodstove and arched doorway into the small room with the kitchen table and bury my face in his suit jacket, holding him tight. Maybe everything will be okay again? He lifts me on his lap and pulls a deck of cards from his breast pocket. He flushes and fantails the cards on the table, tells me to pick one, and guesses the suit and number. We spar a little, because he likes boxing so much and wants me to be a prizefighter.

  “One day you’ll be on the Gillette card!” He levels his hand to measure my height. “You’re getting big and strong.”

  “I’m going to be like Grandpa,” I say. “I can beat up Mocoso!” I say this to impress him but it’s not true. Mocoso and I don’t even argue.

  “You’re not supposed to fight,” Uncle Carlos says, on entering. He has an annoying trait when he is nervous—he sucks his tongue and makes clicking sounds. Aunt Jesse comes in behind him. The tension in the kitchen rises.

  “Don’t tell my son what to do,” Father tells him, and then, to me, “Get lower, elbows against ribs, dodge and slip. Protect the chin.”

  “It’s a disgrace,” Jesse murmurs, as she sits at the table and crosses her arms.

  “Get your clothes on,” my father says. ‘We’re going. Don’t wake your brother and sister.” I hurry because I’m afraid my father’s going to fight with Carlos, and I’m relieved when we leave. I’m nervous too, because I hope my father doesn’t take me on one of his long night drives. We go to the community center, a clapboard barrack with rows of ranch trucks and old cars parked in front. The full moon gives enough light to distinguish the well-worn dirt path leading to the entrance. A woodstove to the right of the door heats the place. My father buys a beer and a soda for me. People see us, and I know by their looks that they know about my father’s drinking and my mom’s running off with a gringo.

  A violin, guitar, and accordion play polkas and corridos. I am amazed how couples dance smoothly through so many difficult maneuvers. The priest hurries outside and then scurries inside, urging the young men to pray for blessings, good health and a long life. He fails, however, to dispel their traditional disputes, inflamed by drinking, and by the end of the night they will invariably fight, young Chicanos from one village against young Chicanos from another village, to prove who’s the best. Instead of going outside to play like I usually do, tonight I stay close to my father. I sense something bad in the atmosphere.

  “Have you seen her?” Damacio asks Frankie, a friend who comes up.

  “She may come with her sister from Vaughn,” Frankie says. “Her brothers are outside.”

  My father says nervously, “I just wanted to look in.”

  “Take care,” Frankie advises, his eyes moving to the side with warning.

  But instead of avoiding Mom’s brothers, my father walks out and goes behind the building, where they’re sitting on a truck tailgate. They’re laughing with other cowboys. They’re big and brutish, guffawing loudly until they see him.

  “Is your sister here?”

  Albert guzzles his beer and throws the empty can aside. “You better leave her alone. She don’t want nothing to do with you, greaser.”

  Frankie and his friends approach from behind us. “Yeah? You making the rules now?” They are steely-eyed.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  My father ignores them and goes to the parking lot and starts peering in from car to car. I don’t know what he’s doing but I follow. Behind me, I hear the cowboys and Frankie and his friends fighting.

  From one of the cars at the end of a row, I’m surprised and scared to see Richard leap out and flee.

  A woman grabs me. “Stay here,” she warns, but I struggle to get away. I can’t see who my father is talking to, but my heart is beating loudly because I think it’s my mother.

  “Dammit! Why the hell did you leave, huh? Why?” my father wails. The pain in his voice makes me flinch and I break free from the woman’s clutch and go closer to hear better. My father cries out, like a man who just got shot, “!Hija de la chingada puta madre!” He grabs my mother by the hair, drags her out of the car, and punches her.

  She slaps and scratches back. “My brothers are going to kill you, bastard!”

  “Why did you leave me? Sign the divorce papers! Call the police!” He pushes her to the ground and straddles her. His curses and her screams explode like bombs and create deep black craters in my mind and heart. I have trouble breathing, as if a rope is tightening around my neck.

  “I am finished with you!” She bi
tes him on the arm and runs off.

  My father goes after her. I follow them to the railroad tracks by the warehouses, in an open field. He forces Mom to sit on a discarded couch. It is cold and each can see the other’s face clearly in the moonlight.

  I crouch in the weeds close enough to overhear them.

  “You know”—my father starts, then breaks off—“I drink. I’m trying to stop. I love you, Cecilia.”

  “You belong over there, Damacio,” she says, indicating the Blue Ribbon cantina at the corner. She looks at him with genuine compassion and pity for a moment.

  “We belong together,” he says. “We drove down that street so many times, holding hands and sitting next to each other. We promised we’d love each other forever. We used to stand over there in the morning and kiss in the sun.”