The Moths and Other Stories

by Helena María Viramontes

  “Are you dreaming unnatural acts?” He drummed his fingers on his knees.

  “I think so. At least it is to me, Father.”

  “Is it anything sexual?”

  “No.” He wasn’t listening, was he? “No,” she repeated. “It’s like a nightmare. I close my eyes and there is darkness. I think I’m asleep, then…”

  He heard movement.

  “…then, my eyelids become one black screen. I anticipate a movie or something. While I am waiting, I begin to hear voices. It’s my father, talking loud, his words loud and slurred. They’re arguing about something. Something having to do with my mother, then…No. Something having to do with my father. I still see the screen before my eyes, but I’m so sleepy. Yreina, you know her, Father, my younger sister, begs me to pray to God to make the voices stop. But you see, Father, I can’t because I’m asleep, and when you’re asleep, you don’t know what’s going on. Everything is not real, and so the voices aren’t real and I wanted it that way. By morning, I would open my eyes with no memory, nothing. So I wasn’t supposed to know what was happening.”

  She stopped there, and again he heard movement.

  “Go on,” he heard himself say.

  “I’m asleep; I see a speck on the screen. A faraway speck coming closer and bigger and bigger and closer and soon the speck shapes into a statue. Our Lord with His hands outstretched. I feel comforted, even if He is only a statue in the living room. I don’t hear voices. Good. I’m asleep.”

  Again there was silence. He hadn’t had breakfast yet and his stomach gurgled in anger. She continued.

  “There He stands. Solid. But what happened next I will never understand. I will never be able to forgive myself for letting it happen. I heard something, something loud. A bullet sound. It rang. The ringing visualized into a tail connected to the bullet sound. I saw it pierce the image, burst like a firecracker. Sparks. Pierce it into little pieces before my eyes, flashing light on the screen. I think I know what happened, but it’s a dream. I’m asleep, you see.”

  He’s on the couch. Please, my God, he’s full of blood. Wake up, Martha, quick, pleaseohmygod…Someone broke a statue of Jesus—the one with His hands outstretched, and now he’s bleeding on the couch. I heard the crash and the bones shatter like sparks from wall to wall, but I want to be left alone. He’s bleeding all over the…I keep my eyelids cemented together and I wish I could stuff rags in her volcanic mouth. But Yreina’s an eruption. I heard the explosion, goddammit, so leave me alone. I was sinking into the mattress until I could barely see the tops of my warm sheets. Then, with the burst, I was vomiting on top of them. Stay asleep. So good to sleep. I act as if Yreina is just another addition to my sleep. I feel hands, cold and tight around my neck as Yreina screams Wake up, Martha, jesusmío, Mama shot…

  II

  The saloon consisted of various kitchen tables and chairs colored from egg-yolk yellows to checkered red and whites. Although it was the rainy mid-March season, deflated balloons and faded crepe paper remained on the ceiling as a reminder of a never-ceasing New Year celebration. Christmas lights shone against two mirrors on one wall directly behind the bar. The dance floor was a small area made up of cracked, unsettled tiles often caked with mud until Olivia cleaned them early the next morning. Olivia, the evening barmaid and morning cleaning woman of Los Amigos, mopped the floors with a thick heavy cloth connected to a mop stick. Her shoulders tired of pushpulling the mop; the ache soon dropped from her shoulders and concentrated in her legs and feet—those same dancing feet that patted the mud tighter into the cracks of the tiles.

  It was the rainy season and business seemed slower than usual, for although there was still an even flow of customers, the tips dwindled to almost nothing. This time, however, Olivia didn’t mind all that much; she looked forward to seeing the man who had, without knowing it, unburied her feelings of loneliness and at the same time given her anticipated pleasure by just being in the same room with her. Presently, he was the man she secretly loved.

  She had not felt like this in a very long time; moonwarm and tender for another person. She loved once before, but not secretly. She lived openly with him, bringing forth two sons. And what a scandal that had caused! If she would have to live an outcast, she would do so for him. But he left one afternoon. The room was getting hotter.

  Oh, but could he love. Love her anywhere, anyplace. She remembered when she thought her head had exploded and bled between her legs when he first made love to her on the roof of her house. She could remember that slow-slap, faint-slap, almost monotonous-slap of her mother making tortillas in the kitchen right beneath them turn into an intense applause…and then she hated him, his two sons—thank goodness she gave them her name—and finally love itself. Her arms thrust the mopstick harder.

  But Tomás. He was not a coward. Someday, she would have to let him know how she felt. But she couldn’t, shouldn’t wait too long. Already her youth was peeling off her face like the paint on the saloon walls. Olivia stopped to inspect the job. The dance floor was ready for tonight.

  Olivia thought of her two sons as she locked the front doors of the saloon, proud of herself for being the only other person to hold the key to the establishment, and she smiled that smile when she remembered the roof incident. The key; just her and the old man. The old, tight, stinky sonofabitch, she thought. It was noon and the streets of Tijuana were flooded with puddles of muddy water. Two kids bathed near the street corner and the Saturday tourists waved like national flags along the sidewalks. The air was unusually fresh and she looked up at the sky. It will be a good night tonight, she thought as she hurried home.

  Tomás’s wife was a statue-tall woman with floods of thick black hair that reached to the folds of her buttocks. She watched her reflection in the mirror, brushing her hair with slow moving strokes. She enjoyed the luxury of time and the full view of herself. It was like a vacation long deserved, to stay at a place where she didn’t have to make beds or clean toilets, or wash off graphic depictions of sexual acts penciled on the walls. Although he did not bring her on his trips across the border to Tijuana (using the excuse that it would be dangerous for her since she would probably be jailed along with him if he were ever caught passing mexicanos without proper papers), he asked her to come as far as Chula Vista. Perhaps he thought she needed the rest from her duties as wife and mother, and only in complete solitude did she feel like a woman. Too soon would the grape harvest return; the Fresno sun was almost mockingly waiting to bleed the sweat from all five of them. All five. Mis niños. Next time she would bring Martha, Yreina and Miguelito. She braided her hair. He had gone attending business in Tijuana and would not be back for two hours. He would pick her up later and they would go to the saloon tonight. Tomás’ wife wondered if that old barmaid (what-was-her-name-now?) still worked there and she wondered if Tomás left her, would she become like her? Weary of travel, she rested her body on the fresh-sheeted soft bed.

  Olivia had always avoided looking at herself completely in the mirror; her eyes focused only on the part she attended to. She knew age was nesting. The short skirt revealed her skinny legs that knotted at the knees, and her small but protruding belly surpassed her breasts. Yet she tried making the best of it. With a low-cut blouse and wearing her hair down, she would not be called a vieja so often. Like an artist, she began creating her illusionary eyes with the colors of a forest.

  Tomás’s wife dreamt of houses. Big ones that would belong to all five of them. A color T.V. and an island. She dreamt of her mother, dozens of diapers blazing, and an invisible bird with huge wings.

  Two large false lashes were glued expertly on her natural ones. The eyes were traced with liner and the eyelids finely painted with eye shadow. Done. She lit a cigarette and sat in front of the mirror, re-evaluating the masterpiece. Now, not even the make-up covered her deeper wrinkles. Olivia put her cigarette down, wet her fingers with her tongue, and rubbed away the chappedness of her elbows.

  Tomás’s wife stretched out slowly,
awakening like a cat. It was later than she had anticipated; she hurried to unbraid her hair and continued brushing it as he entered the room, carrying a bag of sweet bread, two bright pink and green ponchos wrapped in transparent paper, and a toy rifle, resembling his own, for Miguelito.

  “For the niños.” He laid the purchases on the bed. “Tomorrow we have to leave early. I’ll have to return next week.” Only then will the gente be ready and waiting at Los Amigos.” To Tomás’ wife this meant that he would not take her across the border and into Tijuana. She understood him well, although he said nothing; her vacation was cut short. Tomás unbuttoned his shirt, pulled off his dusty shoes, and went into the bathroom. There was a flushing sound of the toilet, then the rush of water in the shower. She put her hair up in a bun, disrobed, and entered the shower with him discreetly.

  The perfume was the final touch. Olivia left some tacos and three dollars on the kitchen table. She never knew exactly when her sons came home nor when she herself would, so she left food and money always. It was a silent contract that they had with one another; she never played mother and they, in turn, never asked her to. Olivia blessed herself, sighed, and hurried to the saloon anticipating Tomás’ laugh.

  III

  The promise of night disappeared. He would probably awaken disoriented and bewildered at the unfamiliar room, she thought. But she would assure him that nothing happened because nothing did happen. Tomás had sunk onto the cracked dance-floor tile after that last shot of José Cuervo, drunk, and she had asked his companions to take him to her place. Tomorrow he was leaving for Fresno, to go to his wife, and who knows when she would see him again. Tomás—buried beneath the blankness that liquor caused—slept soundly, unyielding to the fingers that petted and comforted him.

  Olivia undressed and lay close to him, defeated but warm. The heaviness of his slow breathing and his oppressive presence held blocks against her sleep. She rested her hand against the firm folds of his breasts, crushing his unraveled curls. Her hand caught the rhythm of his breath. She heard the Sunday morning church bells summon the mourning, sleepless women with dust on their hair, and she would have to wake him before the dawn revealed her secret. Today he was returning to Fresno.

  “Tomás.” She hoped to awaken him, but all he did was grunt and jerk away from her. The bells of the church rang heavy in the air. Olivia touched his shoulder.

  “Tomás.” The bells faded. “Sometimes in my sleep,” she whispered to him as if speaking to a child not yet born of its senses, “…I can see the inside of me. Mesh. It looks like mesh. Pieces of bones rattling like ice in an empty glass. Those are times I wish I was an artist so I could paint a picture of myself…” Olivia closed her eyes. “…Lime-light green, dull yellow, mixed together like vomit.” She turned away from him, facing the window. The cool awakening gray-glow dawn illuminated the room slowly.

  “It’s true, Tomás. It’s true,” she whispered to the window. “Sometimes in your sleep, you can see the inside of you.” His snoring was like the soft hum of a bee next to her ears. She became still, almost tranquil as that morning, and her eyes bled tears, first quiet flowing tears, then hot, salty stabbing tears uncontrolled, while his snoring was like the soft hum of a bee next to her ears.

  IV

  “What are you raving about? You think you’re not guilty? You, a whore, a bitch! I’m not finished, stay. Before I hit you again. And again. But you won’t cry in front of me, will you? You won’t please me by unveiling your pain, will you? Let them hear. They’re probably not mine anyway.

  “The marihuana opiates, the liquor seduces. That is why nothing can hurt me, not even you. I work to live, and I hate it. I live for you, and I hate it. I have another shot of tequila—tequila is a good mistress—and two more before I ask myself, why live?

  “I loved you too much. Now I have no pride, no respect for myself. I’m waiting for the breeze that will lift and carry me away from you.

  “Ha. Ha. You say that I am unfaithful? In Tijuana, last week? Like the devil, you disguise yourself as a gnat to spy on me? I should have spied on you that night you let him rip the virginity out of you, the blood and slime of your innocence trailing down the sides of his mouth. You tramp. You righteous bitch. Don’t I have the right to be unfaithful? Weren’t you? Vete mucho a chingar a tu madre, más cabrona que la chingada…”

  Martha, please pray to God to make them stop. God doesn’t listen to me.

  “Perra, don’t rage to me about that barmaid! Answer me, vieja cabrona, ans…”

  Like a drowning, hissing fire, his ghost smoldered while he lay there. Tomás’ wife thought of towers crumbling and then of his intoxicants that unleash and loosen those hidden passions that burn through the soul and float up to a smoldering belch, causing him to rage that pure rage that no one really knew of. Tomás was now an invincible cloud of the past, she thought. A coiled smoking ghost. She kneeled beside him, laying her puzzle-piece heart against his unliving one. Unliving because she had pressured the trigger tight, then tightfingered it until his chest blew up, spilling the oozing blood that stained all tomorrows. And yet he seemed more alive. No. More real than anything, anyone around her. She spoke to him with the voice of prayer. “And you? The choice was yours, Tomás. As for me, I had no choice. I had given up being a woman for you, just like you gave up your own respect and dignity when you married me. Surely now, at this moment, I feel so close to you; equally dead, but equally real.” How could she explain to him that she was so tired and wrinkled and torn by him, his God, and his word? She had tried to defy the rules by sleeping with another man, but that only left her worse off. And she could not leave him because she no longer owned herself. He owned her, her children owned her, and she needed them all to live. And she was tired of needing.

  What to tell the police, what to say. Tomás’s unfaithfulness. That was as real as his body on the couch. “Tomás was a trustful man, but flesh is flesh, men are men…”

  The acid fumes that fiercely clawed her insides crept timidly away from her and mingled with the roaming urinal scent of the hospital cell. Her children in time would forgive her. But God? He would never understand; He was a man, too. No. She would become a cricket wailing nightly for redemption. That suited her; she would be wailing for redemption. With the strength of defiant resignation, she stared zombie-like at the name printed on the wristband.

  V

  “She moaned a lot in her sleep and sometimes she’d say things out loud that she’d never say awake. Since we slept in the same bed, she would sometimes hang onto me and call me by his name. It wasn’t your father’s name though; it wasn’t Tomás.

  “Under other circumstances, if you had asked me these questions, I would have belted you hard, as I often did to curious children who peeked through my window. I am old now, old and with the same name, and I tell you these things because soon you will be ready for marriage and the worms will cover me completely and it’ll be too late to tell you anything. How uncomfortable, these worms; today I found two of them squirming around my toes. Yesterday I found one burrowing into my thigh. I kill them, but I am losing my strength.

  “I am not an evil woman, Martha, but my body has suffered much. Look at this body—twisted like tangled tree roots. Hand me that glass of water, Martita, I am dry. A little warm, but good. So you want to know about your parents? Damn fly. Flies drop dead all around this house. Just the other day, one fell into my teeth glass. For God’s life, I couldn’t bring myself to put on my teeth. Wretched things, these teeth.

  “As you know, I am your oldest aunt. Because I was the first, our mother—not knowing how many daughters she would have—saved the beauty that was supposed to be shared among us. Since I was the first-born daughter, she gave me bad teeth, and since your mother was the last, she gave her all the beauty she denied her other daughters, including me. I remember an old boyfriend of mine. Alejandro? No, Alfredo. Alfredo was his name. He used to tell me, ‘Smile, chica, smile, so I can see my reflection.’ He was a good man, th
at Alfredo. You know, Martha, Alfredo and I were going to get married once. I knew him for years and years and he always called me Little Rabbit because of my teeth. But once he began to notice your mother’s developing breasts, and I caught her giving him that look, I told him to go far away. He was a good man, that Alfredo.

  “It is already getting dark. Please light Jesucristo’s candle for me. The days seem so short now. You will say a rosary with me before you go, won’t you? What did you say? What was your father doing all this time? Tempting the dreams of older women, that Tomás. I had my eye out for him long before his voice even changed. But your mother gave him the look, and I had no right to tell him to go away. From the very beginning, he gave himself completely to her. And that was a mistake. Because her heart was just a seed then, she could not give him something she had not yet created. This drove Tomás crazy and I would tell her, tell her, ‘It is evil to make him suffer,’ and your mother would say, ‘I can’t help it if he loves me.’ He asked me to watch over your mother, that Tomás.

  “Jesús mío, but it gets cold in here. My body begins to freeze at the feet and by morning I am a snow cone. Thank you for the blanket, Martita. Now where was…oh. Many weeks pass. One late night—did I tell you that we shared a bed, your mother and I? Well, one late night I hear tapping on the window. I think it’s Tomás coming to get her and I act as if nothing awakes me. Your mother slips out from between the sheets like a snake shedding its skin. She opens the window and they exchange whispers. It is a man all right, but not Tomás.

  “God have mercy on my soul, child, but you are a good Martita who must know the truth or else you’ll never be at peace and this is why I hope I am not wrong in telling you.

  “The man waited outside while your mother felt around the dark room for her robe. I burst out in loud whispers asking her where she is going and who is that man. ‘I’ll return,’ is all she answers. After a long while I am awakened by a cold weight smelling of soft dirt and grass. It was her, breathing as if she had run for miles. Tomás returned about three months after, and I, though years paint coats of vagueness on memories, will never forget the look on Tomás’ face when your mother greeted him on the porch with a small belly. They got married a few days later.